Magic for Nothing

by Seanan McGuire

  Then, to my disgust and dismay—but not surprise—she turned and walked into the convenience store.

  The inside was as bad as the outside. I’ve shopped in some pretty sketchy establishments (usually because the cruddy hole-in-the-wall comic book stores are the ones where you’re most likely to find the buried treasures), but this one made me want to take a shower. And then maybe another shower. And then maybe a third shower, just to be safe.

  A beautiful blonde woman sat behind the counter, face buried in a trashy romance novel. She didn’t look up when the door opened, or when it swung closed behind us.

  “Afternoon, Miri,” said Verity.

  Miri grunted, and continued her unbroken streak of not looking up.

  “This way,” said Verity, beckoning for me to follow her to a door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY. The sign was Sharpie on what looked like the top of a pizza box. Definitely some high-tech security.

  Only maybe there was, because Verity had to undo three locks to get the door open, and only one of them had been visible. “The dragons closed this bodega for a while, when they first moved in with William,” she explained, opening the door and holding it for me and Dominic to pass by. “They still owned the property, though, and when the Freakshow burned down, Kitty convinced them to reopen it as part of the temporary rental agreement between them and the bogeymen. They provide a guard, Kitty promises not to make any noises about getting her security deposit back when time comes for the locals to move on.”

  “Some guard,” I said.

  “Oh, she is,” said Verity. “She has a panic button linked to the main room, and we always have at least one therianthrope waiting for signs of trouble. She pushes that button, there’s an angry tanuki in the bodega five minutes later. I just wish the dragons would let us clean the place. It used to be spotless, difficult as that may be to believe, and it was a lot more feasible that people would actually shop there. Now, they want it to look abandoned when they move back out, so we’re not even allowed to mop.”

  “Ew,” I said.

  “Precisely my thought,” said Dominic.

  The employee door connected to a short hallway. It ended at another door, this one unlocked. Verity pushed it open. On the other side was a boxy little space with no exits to the street. The walls were brick; it looked like maybe it was an alley in the beginning, until too many buildings got jammed up against it and cut it off from its original purpose.

  Someone had chalked a hopscotch grid on the pavement. Verity stepped carefully around the lines. Dominic, to my surprise, hopped on one foot through half the grid before turning to wink at me. I grinned. He smiled back.

  “This was the original home of the dragons of Manhattan, until they found out about William,” explained Verity, heading for a nearby door. “They’re not selling the property for a lot of reasons. Using it as a rental space for cryptids in crisis is one of them. They’re also thinking it might be nice to have an aboveground place where their kids can play in a few years, once they figure out how to deal with the little boys. They have wings, and can fly until they’re about ten years old. So there’s definitely something to be said for giving them the chance to see the sky before they’re grounded.”

  “Right,” I said, trying to figure out where she was going with this.

  Verity opened the door, flashed me a smile, and stepped through. I moved to follow. Dominic put a hand on my shoulder, stopping me. I looked up at him, warily.

  “Try not to be too hard on her, if you could,” he said. His voice was soft, sympathetic; he understood why I’d be hard on her, even if he didn’t agree with it. “Your sister genuinely regrets what happened. The people who died on that stage were her friends, and she couldn’t save them. That, alone, should buy her a measure of sympathy. To have her failure compounded by the loss of the Freakshow, and now you being sent to my former fellows to learn how much they know . . . this is killing her inside. She never meant for this to be the outcome of her dancing.”

  “But it is,” I said. “She was selfish. She was always selfish. She knew she was putting the rest of us at risk when she went onstage, and she did it anyway, over and over, because she wanted to. Because she thought having a gift meant she got to decide whether the rest of us get put in danger. Because she thought Alex and I didn’t count as much as she did. This is her fault. She has to own that.”

  “She’s trying,” he said, casting a quick glance in the direction Verity had gone. “Every day, she’s trying. So please, for my sake, if you could try as well, that would be . . . well, that would be an enormous favor.”

  “I’m only here for a few hours; I can try for a few hours,” I said. “But I’m not going to stop being mad at her, and you don’t get to ask me to do that.”

  “That’s fine,” said Dominic, looking relieved. “A few hours is all I can in good conscience ask of you. Thank you, Annie.”

  “You’re welcome,” I said, and pushed past him through the door.

  The room on the other side looked more like the sort of place I usually hung out than the sort of place where I expected to find Verity: it was huge, with a polished wooden floor and a catwalk around the edges of the second floor. The roof was easily twenty feet overhead. I looked at it, eyes wide, and wished desperately that I had time to strap on my skates and find out how fast I could go from one side of the space to the other. The people would have made for an interesting obstacle course, which just made it more tempting. They were scattered around, mostly sitting on camp chairs at card tables, like they were roughing it in the great indoors.

  There was no furniture that couldn’t be moved quickly, and there were some dubious-looking chains hanging from the ceiling. I eyed them before turning to Dominic. “Slaughterhouse?”

  “A very long time ago,” he said. “Prior to our current occupation, this was the Nest of the local dragons.”

  “So you’ve said.” Verity was heading toward us, a short, plump, apparently Inuit woman wearing an explosion of lace and black fishnet following close behind her. The woman was carrying a parasol, despite the fact that there was no sun to block. I gave the pair a dubious look. “Um.”

  “Ta-da!” Verity stopped in front of me, gesturing to her companion. “Istas, meet my baby sister, Antimony. Antimony, meet Istas. She’s going to help you with your hair.”

  “Nice to meet you,” I said automatically, before following it up with, “Wait, what? I’m sorry. There seems to have been some confusion. I can handle my own hair. I’ve been doing it for years.”

  “That may be so, but it will be a faster, cleaner process if you have help,” said Istas. She spun her parasol. “Henna is more pleasant with an extra set of hands.”

  “It’s really not necessary,” I said.

  “It will be easier,” said Istas. Her tone remained neutral the whole time, like this was a discussion about how much she was willing to pay for coffee. “Trust me. I was the stylist for the Freakshow, before the building was burned by cowards. I am very skilled.”

  “Istas is the best,” said Verity.

  The name finally clicked home with something Verity had said in her letters home. “You’re waheela, right?” I asked.

  Istas nodded. “I am,” she agreed.

  “Okay, cool.” I’d never spent much time with a waheela. I really do prefer to do my own hair, but the chance to hang out with a new type of therianthrope was too much to resist. “There’s just one thing we have to do first.”

  “What is that?” asked Istas.

  “This,” I said, took a deep breath, and said, more loudly, “Professor Xavier is a jerk!”

  One of the outside pockets of my backpack stirred before the zipper eased open a few inches and a mouse popped out. She looked cautiously from side to side. Then she ran up the backpack and jumped into my waiting hand. I raised it to chest height, giving her a clear view of the room around us.

 
“Istas, may I present the current junior priest of my line, and my companion on this voyage. I can’t pronounce her name, since I’m not an Aeslin mouse, but she and I have agreed that ‘Mindy’ is an acceptable thing for me to call her. Mindy, this is Istas. She’s a waheela. She will not eat you.”

  “Hello, carnivore,” said Mindy, forcing her whiskers forward in the wide fan that served the Aeslin as a gesture of greeting. She was only trembling a little. I was very proud of her.

  Verity looked impressed. “Okay, how in the hell did you convince an Aeslin mouse to be quiet for that long?”

  “I am on a Spy Mission,” said Mindy proudly. She pulled herself to her full, if diminutive, height, and squeaked, “Hail to the Arboreal Priestess, who did not know I was here!”

  “Hail,” agreed Verity, sounding faintly amused. “My colony’s in the wall, if you wanted to say hello.”

  Mindy looked to me for permission. I nodded.

  “Go say hello,” I said. “I’ll call for you when it’s time for us to go.”

  “Thank you, Priestess,” squeaked Mindy. She jumped back down to the backpack, ran from there down to the floor, and scampered away. Some of the people in the room turned to watch her go, but none of them moved to stop her or interfere. They really had been living with Verity for a while.

  Speaking of Verity . . . I turned back to her, and said, “Mindy’s going with me to serve as a black box, in case I don’t come back.”

  Her face fell, amusement transforming into guilt. “Annie, I’m so—”

  “I know, and this isn’t the time to get into it, okay? She’s the only mouse going with me, because there’s no way I can hide a colony and keep the Covenant from realizing something’s up. She has safe words to tell her when she can come out—hence the thing about Professor Xavier—and signals to tell her when she needs to hide and stay hidden until I give her the all-clear. She takes her mission very seriously.”

  “Aeslin always do,” said Verity, still looking guilty. “I really am sorry.”

  “And I really do mean it when I say this isn’t the time. It would be fun to yell at you and know that you’d just take it, but if Istas and I are going to fix my hair and get me ready, we need to get started.” I turned to Istas. “You know the layout. Lead the way.”

  She sniffed the air twice, in an almost canine gesture, and wrinkled her nose. “A shower first, I think. After that, we will begin.”

  When the terrifying shapeshifting carnivore says it’s time to shower, it’s time to shower. I grabbed my backpack in one hand, the handle of my suitcase in the other, and followed Istas across the slaughterhouse to something less complicated than my family.

  I sat wrapped in a towel while Istas applied the henna to my hair, humming in a not-unpleasant voice while she worked. Occasionally, she’d ask me to move my head to one side or the other, but for the most part, she seemed content to treat me like a living prop, and I was happy to let her. Again: less complicated than my family.

  Being a natural brunette in a family of blondes, it took me a while to learn to love my hair. Henna helped a lot. From the first box I bought at the Hot Topic in the mall to the better-quality stuff I started having delivered to the family post office box when I turned eighteen, henna has never let me down. It doesn’t damage my hair like box color and bleach, and it doesn’t require hours sitting at the salon. Best of all, even “brightening” henna will never turn me into a blonde. I don’t have to feel like I’m trying to make myself look like someone I’m not. I’m just turning myself into a brighter version of, well, myself, and that’s okay. That doesn’t speak to a bad self-image. That doesn’t mean trying to find a therapist.

  (When your family works with things that officially don’t exist, therapy is an interesting proposition. Pretty much anyone you talk to has to be a part of the community, since otherwise “this morning I helped a harpy lay her eggs” is the sort of sentence that can lead to medication or involuntary committal. I could probably use some therapy. I think the same is true of most of my relatives. But that doesn’t make it easy.)

  Mindy was off with Verity’s mice, swapping newly-developed rituals and reinforcing the strength of their respective oral histories. Aeslin mice never forget anything they see or hear, and there doesn’t seem to be an upper limit to their memories—at this point, our family colony contains the memory of dozens of generations of mice, chronicling the lives of seven generations of Prices, Healys, Harringtons, and Carews. Mindy probably doesn’t know the intricate details of the worship of my mother, since she has never been a part of that priesthood, but she can provide the rough shapes of every major life event Mom has experienced since meeting my father. Where she shines, as a member of my priesthood, is at remembering my life. Everything that has ever happened to me is preserved in the memories of the mice.

  What happened to me in Europe would be preserved, too. That was why Mindy wore a very small tracking device built by my cousin Artie on a beaded string around her neck. It was inert and untraceable unless activated. She was incredibly proud of the responsibility, which marked her as chosen above all others in my priesthood. And if something happened to me—if the Covenant caught on, if I wasn’t going to be coming home—that tracking device would give the rest of my family something to look for. Because even when something was as far as possible from the desired outcome, it was important to plan for it.

  “This is a good color for your skin tone,” said Istas, beginning to wrap my head. “Once it is set, I would like you to permit me to trim your split ends and shape the hair around your face.”

  “It doesn’t need—”

  “It is clear that you prefer a hairstyle with a minimum of fuss. I can provide that, and you will lose very little length. But doing this will change the way your cheekbones appear to the casual onlooker, and may complicate facial recognition from photographs. Not enough, should you say something you should not, but sufficient to reduce your resemblance to yourself.” Istas continued wrapping. “I will not even attempt to talk to you about makeup.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You should not thank me. You have an excellent complexion. You would make a beautiful canvas.”

  “I know how to do makeup. I just generally don’t, unless there’s a good reason.” Being a high school cheerleader was like going to cosmetology school, only without the degree at the end. If there’s a trick to blending foundation or enhancing eye color, I know it. I even remember most of it, thanks to the parts that are also applicable to roller derby. (We don’t wear nearly as much makeup, and what we do wear trends toward the waterproof and aggressively Gothic, but there’s only one way to hold the average mascara brush.)

  “May I suggest deciding this is a good reason?” Istas finished wrapping and stripped her gloves off, dropping them into the waiting basin. “Makeup is excellent armor against some of the things the world will throw in your direction. This would not be a poor time to go armored.”

  “I’ll think about it,” I said. I’d been thinking about it. Most of the carnie kids I knew didn’t wander around fully made-up at all times, but there’s reality, and then there’s expectation. The Covenant might think that someone who came from an American carnival would always look like a Kardashian sister. If that was the case, there was going to be a lot of lip liner in my future.

  “Excellent,” said Istas. “Please sit still until I return. The henna needs to set.” She turned and left the room, stylish kitten heels clacking against the floor, and I was alone.

  I closed my eyes, settling deeper into the seat as I took a deep breath and considered the merits of freaking out. This was it: this was the last time I was going to be Antimony Price for I didn’t even know how long. Unlike Verity, who’s been running from her family and her identity since as far back as I could remember, I’d never wanted to be anyone but me. I liked being me. I wasn’t perfect, but no one was, and at least I was familiar wi
th my imperfections.

  Footsteps approached me. I didn’t open my eyes.

  “Annie?”

  The voice was Verity’s. I didn’t open my eyes even harder.

  She sighed. “Look, I know you’re mad, and I know Dominic asked you to take it easy on me, and I know we’re not like, great friends or anything, but this isn’t me coming to try apologizing again. This is me coming with an update on your mission.”

  “Okay.” I opened my eyes. “What’s the sitch?”

  “I have your paperwork.” She handed me a large manila envelope with a Las Vegas postmark. “Passport, credit card, ATM card, New York driver’s license, student ID card, New York library card, birth certificate on specially aged paper, and a medallion of St. Julian the Hospitaller. He’s—”

  “The patron saint of carnival workers,” I said, and kicked my backpack with the toe of one foot. “Good detail. Can you open the front pocket and pass me my wallet?”

  “Sure.” She looked slightly deflated. She’d probably been hoping I’d be impressed by the medallion, or give her a sisterly high-five or something. Sadly, that was not on the docket for the day. She probably hadn’t even been the one who asked for it. Big Al was notorious for including little extras like that to make a new ID more believable.

  My wallet is a battered old leather thing I purchased at a flea market when I was fifteen, thinking it looked cool and would probably take a lot of abuse, given that it was already at least twenty years old. I was right on both counts. Better yet, it’s traveled so far and passed through so many pairs of hands that even the routewitches can’t read its owner anymore. If I ever lose it, I’m not getting it back; some trucker or bus driver will pick it up and keep it as a lucky charm without ever asking themselves why they felt the urge to do so.

  I’d already emptied it of everything that could be used to tie me to Oregon or Antimony Price. My real ID had been abandoned in my bedroom, left on the dresser to gather dust until I either came home for it or the mice claimed it as a religious artifact, to be preserved with the rest of the reminders of my too-short life. The trouble was the distance between here and there, the receipts, the ticket stubs, the proofs of purchase. The small detritus of a life can seem exactly that—small—but it’s all too often the thing that trips people up. Someone who claims to have never been outside of Florida has a receipt for a Washington coffee shop. Someone who’s supposedly never left the West Coast has a photo strip showing themselves at the Statue of Liberty.