Magic for Nothing

by Seanan McGuire

  There was also a tank filled with adolescent cobras that looked at us with interest but without alarm. Two of them exchanged a look before lifting the first third of their bodies off the ground and flaring their hoods, somehow managing to seem bored even in the midst of what should have been a threat display. I leaned a little closer.

  “Sons or brothers?” I asked.

  The cobras looked surprised, which was a neat trick, since they didn’t have eyelids. Their hoods retracted before they twined around each other. I nodded.

  “Makes sense. Nice to meet you.”

  I straightened up and turned to find Sam looking at me quizzically.

  “What was that about?” he asked.

  “Just meeting the locals. Do you know their names?”

  “Ananta never told me.”

  “I’ll ask her later.” Wadjet women look human; wadjet men and boys look like cobras. Wadjet males normally can’t stand one another’s company, although related males too young to mate can sometimes cohabitate when in the presence of an older female relative. Ananta was keeping these two calm just by being nearby.

  Sam shook his head. “You’re weird.”

  “Is that a problem?”

  “You kidding? It’s half of why I wanted to kiss you.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “What’s the other half?”

  “I don’t know if anyone’s told you this before, but you have amazing breasts.”

  I laughed. I was still laughing when we left the reptile show, and after that, it seemed like I just didn’t stop. We rode every ride, some of them twice, flashing our wristbands at the ride jocks with wide grins on our faces. At least a few townies went off to buy wristbands of their own once they saw how much fun we were having (and after we’d skipped to the front of the line, which again, we could have done anyway, but you can’t buy “works for the show,” and you can buy “priority unlimited ride access”). Sam ate six hot dogs with the sort of focused intensity that he normally reserved for trapeze practice. I ate two in the same amount of time.

  He kissed me in the Tunnel of Love, with giggling townies in the boats to either side of us, separated only by the heart-eyed ducks.

  He kissed me in the haunted house, while white-sheeted ghosts popped out of the walls and made moaning noises that occasionally verged on pornographic, and caused me to start laughing mid-kiss. Sam joined in and laughed with me. What else were we supposed to do?

  He kissed me in front of a basketball-toss game, after winning me a little stuffed bear, and I kissed him in front of a dart game, after winning him a giant stuffed alligator. The game operators in both cases shook their heads and rolled their eyes and raked in the profits as people queued up for another shot at a task that suddenly seemed achievable.

  We traded in the night for kisses, one entertainment at a time, and if the people operating those entertainments smirked and grinned at the sight of us, it didn’t matter. We walked, hand in hand, down the midway as the show was closing around us, watching the townies pouring toward the exit, our stuffed toys in our free hands. All the rides had stopped running, encouraging people to head out a little faster. Sam grinned when he realized that, pulling me toward the Ferris wheel.

  “Come on,” he said. “Last stop.”

  The ride jock on duty started to wave us off when he saw us coming, but stopped when he realized who we were. “I heard you two were playing townie,” he said, friendly enough, if amused. “Am I supposed to be your last stop?”

  “I can handle the wheel,” said Sam. “Why don’t you go get a cup of coffee?”

  “Cool by me,” said the ride jock. “She’s all yours.” Then he leered at me, just to make sure we got his point, before he laughed and wandered off.

  I leaned against the fence while Sam stood next to the controls and scowled at anyone who seemed too interested. “How is this supposed to work? Riding alone is fun and all, but it’s not really a good end to our date.”

  “You’ll see. Just trust me for a minute.”

  “Hmm. Trust you.” I tilted my head, pretending to think about it. “I suppose you’ve earned a little trust. I shall trust you for one minute.”

  “Thank you.” He leaned against the ride console, continuing to glare at townies as they walked past. He had an excellent glare. He’d clearly spent a lot of time perfecting it.

  I took advantage of the pause to look at him. I’d been looking at him all night, but this was really looking, the sort of sappy, concentrated stare that only ever seemed to be okay on a night like this one, under the cloudy Minnesota sky. Before he’d kissed me, he’d been Sam, a boy I liked okay, but didn’t really have any illusions about. He’d been nice, he’d been funny, I’d had a few dirty thoughts about the strength of his hands and the seemingly effortless way he lifted me on the trapeze, but that had been about as far as it had gone. I had long since learned not to expect anything more than that, because it never happened. When it came to guys, I was too loud, too aggressive, too sarcastic—too me. Boys wanted delicate and dainty and flirty and fun. They wanted my sister. I was an afterthought at best.

  Except for Sam, who was apparently not interested in what boys wanted. He wanted what he wanted, and what he wanted was me. So I looked at him, standing there with his shoulders stiff and his face fixed into a scowl, obviously weary from the effort of staying human for so long. I would have felt bad about that, except for the part where everyone makes an effort on a first date. I had smiled, and ridden things I normally would have passed on, and not punched anyone who made comments about my skirt riding up when I was leaning forward to throw darts. We were both putting our best face forward.

  I just hoped he didn’t think this was the face I needed.

  “Okay,” said Sam, snapping me out of my contemplation. “Get on.”

  I looked around. The townies were gone. There might still be a few lingering on the grounds, but they no longer had the numbers to compel anything from the staff. “Get on?”

  “The Ferris wheel.”

  I gave him a dubious look. “Again, I don’t want to ride alone.”

  “Just get on.”

  The Ferris wheel was a tempting circle cut out of the night. I shook my head to remind him of my doubts, and I got on, settling myself into the waiting basket seat and clipping my safety bar across my lap. The wheel began to turn. When it reached the top, it stopped, and I was suspended against the night, with the darkening carnival spread out in front of me, the bone yard twinkling beyond it like a field of stars. I relaxed against the seat, enjoying the way it rocked, and the feeling of the wind blowing through my hair.

  At least, until the seat rocked violently from the impact of something larger than I was. I whipped around, tensing. Sam grinned at me. He was hanging off the side of the basket seat, his tail curled around the safety bar and his bare feet gripping next to his hands. For the first time all night, he actually looked relaxed.

  “Took you long enough,” I said, forcing my own shoulders to unlock. “Give me one good reason I shouldn’t tell you to scram now that I’ve remembered how nice it is up here.”

  “I’m super cute,” he said earnestly. “Science says you should let me stay.”

  “Oh, well, if it’s science, come on in.”

  He slipped into the seat, getting the safety bar across his lap, and started to inhale—the first step to tensing enough to be human again. I didn’t stop to think, just reached over and grabbed his hand, breaking his concentration.

  “Don’t,” I said. “You’re fine exactly as you are.”

  Sam blinked. “Are you sure? I mean, I’ve never . . .”

  “You mean the girls who’ve kissed you before have only ever wanted to kiss you when you looked human?”

  He nodded. I wondered whether it was a sign of becoming a jealous girlfriend that I suddenly wanted to punch all his exes. I decided probably not. I
was not Scott Pilgrim, and this was not a video game. They were just all jerks.

  “Then they were jerks,” I said, word mirroring thought. “Come here.”

  He scooted over, looking almost shy. I leaned over, and I kissed him.

  His skin was warmer this way, but his lips were the same, and his hair felt like fur when I slid my fingers through it. He wrapped his tail around my waist, pulling me closer still, and we sat there at the top of the Ferris wheel, kissing each other and pretending that the rest of the world didn’t matter, because in that moment, in that embrace, it didn’t.

  Nineteen

  “We can run from our past, but the past follows. One step at a time, forever, the past follows.”

  —Enid Healy

  The Spenser and Smith Family Carnival, the next day

  THE PROMISE OF RAIN the sky had been making for days was finally being fulfilled. The clouds had ripped open shortly after midnight, forcing an all-hands rush for the midway to close down games, cover concessions, and tent the rides, which now lurked, plastic-covered monstrosities presiding over a sea of mud.

  Most of the carnies were either in the mess tent, playing cards and yelling at each other, or hiding in their RVs to avoid playing cards and yelling at each other. I fell into the latter category. I’d spent most of the morning helping the Aeslin mice remodel and expand their little house, enjoying the opportunity to sit around in my pajamas without worrying about someone asking me to do something.

  There was a knock on the RV door.

  I turned to look at it, unable to stop myself from considering how flammable the person on the other side was likely to be. This was supposed to be a day off to think about how I was going to keep the Covenant from screwing everything up. The rain said so.

  The person knocked again. I sighed, stood, and walked the three steps necessary to open the door.

  Sam, standing barefoot in the rain with a large umbrella in his hands and his tail wrapped around his own waist, presumably to keep it from getting wet, smiled cautiously up at me. The faint smell of damp fur accompanied him. It wasn’t unpleasant, but it was oddly unexpected. “Hey,” he said. “You’re up.”

  “Yeah, but not dressed,” I said. “Did you want to come in? The mice are singing hymns about home repair.”

  “Hail!” squeaked Mindy.

  “No, I’m good,” said Sam. “I’m going to be heading into town around noon to get supplies and stuff. I figured you might want to come along.”

  “What made you think that?”

  “The part where I’ve known these people for my entire life, and being rained in with them still makes me want to scream and claw my eyes out.”

  “Fair.” I glanced over to where Mork and Mindy were carrying stacks of Popsicle sticks gleaned from the midway around their house. “Can we stop at a craft store? I need to pick up some wood glue.”

  “Sure. See you at my place at noon?”

  “Sure,” I said, and matched his smile with one of my own. He went squelching off into the mud. I closed the door, took a step backward, and sat down heavily on the bed.

  “Priestess?” I looked up. Mindy had moved to the edge of the counter and was looking at me with concern. “Are you well?”

  “Everything is very confusing right now, Mindy, that’s all.”

  Mindy bristled her whiskers at me. Behind her, Mork was continuing to check the length of the Popsicle sticks against the walls of their house. He wasn’t as comfortable addressing me directly as she was. He probably never would be. The branch of the family we’d left in England had a lot to answer for. “Because of the Work You Do, or because of the Work You Want?”

  Aeslin mice are always truthful, but not always perfectly literal. I smiled at her, sadly. “A little of both, with a side order of I think I really like a guy, and I can’t possibly have him, because he’s part of the work I want, and the work I’m doing is just going to put him in danger.”

  “Is it not tradition to travel to carnivals and fall in love under false pretenses? Did not the Violent Priestess ride a white horse and love the God of Unexpected Situations in a place very much like this one?”

  “Yeah, but Great-Grandpa Jonathan didn’t tell Great-Grandma Fran nearly this many lies.” Living with the Aeslin mice means being more in touch with our ancestors than the people we went to school with. It’s necessary, to understand the twists and bends of their oral tradition. “Sam isn’t going to forgive me when he finds out who I really am. I can’t even be mad at him for that. I wouldn’t forgive me either. So I can’t have him, and that means I shouldn’t like him more than I already do.”

  “But you can save him.”

  “Yes,” I said, with a firm nod. “I can save him, and that’s going to have to be enough. No matter what I want, no matter how much I wish I could do this differently, that’s going to have to be enough.”

  Mindy looked at me solemnly. “We will have so many sad songs to sing when we go home.”

  “Yeah, I guess we will.” I stood. “Figure out what you want from the craft store while I get dressed. I’ll even bring you rhinestones, if you want them.”

  If there’s one thing in this world that I know I can rely on, it’s the joyous cheering of the Aeslin mice.

  An hour later, I walked up to the RV shared by Sam and Emery, feeling oddly like I was wearing some sort of costume by going out in jeans, a plain black hoodie over a roller derby tank top, and hiking boots. They were the kind of clothes I wore every day when I was home, when I was Antimony, but here, I was a girl who wandered around in sequins and fishnets, and this seemed too plain. The rain had stopped at some point, although the sky was still dark with clouds, and the mud sucked at my feet with every step I took.

  Then the door opened, and Sam was grinning at me, and my outfit didn’t feel like such a big deal. Especially since he was wearing jeans and a Spider-Man shirt under the denim jacket he’d had on the night before. He was in his human form, probably because of the shoes on his feet: toes took more kindly to being squashed than the semi-fingers he normally sported. Also, it was a lot easier to go shopping with a man than with a monkey.

  “Ready to go?” he asked.

  “Born ready,” I said. “Sometimes at night, I weep because I’m not lost in a Target at that very moment.”

  “In that case, we’re going to have an awesome day.” He looked over his shoulder. “I’m heading out, Grandma!”

  “Obey the speed limit and don’t get pulled over,” Emery shouted back.

  “I will and I won’t!” he said, and bounced out of the RV, pausing only to reach into the bucket next to the door and snag his umbrella. He closed the door with surprising gentleness, flashing me another smile before he started toward the edge of the bone yard where the trucks were parked. “We need to go to the grocery, Costco, Target, and you said you needed a craft store, right?”

  “Yeah, for the mice,” I said. “If we pass a beauty supply shop, I’d like to stop there, too.”

  “Why?”

  “Henna.” I held up a hank of my hair, showing how faded it had become. “I’m a natural brunette, and I like the red highlights I get from a good henna treatment. Also, it means I don’t have to condition as often. I’m not low-maintenance, I’m just lazy.”

  “Lazy.” Sam snorted. “If you’re lazy, I’m a lemur.”

  “That explains the stripes on your tail.”

  He snorted again before walking to the nearest pickup truck, a big, muddy white thing, and unlocking the doors. “Do lemurs eat bananas? Because if they don’t, I might be willing to consider a reclassification.”

  “You know, I honestly don’t know.” He unlocked the passenger side door. I got into the truck, fastening my seat belt before I said, “We could go to the zoo sometime and ask the lemur keeper, but that could have unintended consequences.”

  “You mean like me re
fusing to stop yelling at kids in the petting zoo?”

  “And me getting into a fight with anyone who let their kid tease the bears, yeah.”

  “So probably a bad plan.” Sam started the truck and pulled out, into the muddy field. The tires jerked and shuddered through the ruts. I added “decent driver” to the list of things I knew about him. “I guess I’ll stay a fūri, and we’ll just go to Target.”

  “Sounds like a good plan to me,” I said. We drove in comfortable silence for a few minutes before I said, “I had a nice time last night. Thank you.”

  “You weren’t the only one.” His smile was sidelong and shy. “I’ve never kissed a girl when I wasn’t trying to look like this.” He waved a hand at himself, indicating his generally human appearance. “It was really nice.”

  “Any girl that doesn’t want to kiss you when you’re being yourself isn’t worth kissing,” I said firmly. “That sort of thing has no place in a relationship.”

  “Are we in a relationship?”

  The question sounded sincere. I paused, calming my initial terrified reaction, and rubbed my suddenly hot fingertips against my jeans before I said, “Not yet. We might be. I mean. I could see that happening. Maybe. Couldn’t you?”

  “Right now, I think I’d run away with you if you asked me to.” The admission was shy but sincere.

  And I considered it, I really did. Not for long, but . . . I’d have to go back for the mice. That was the only thing I couldn’t leave behind. We could run for the hills, and the Covenant would never find us. I could even warn Ananta and the bogeymen before we went, give them time to get out of there. The Covenant wouldn’t kill innocent humans, I was almost sure of that. They’d raid the carnival, find nothing there to cleanse, and go home.

  Even as I thought about it, I knew I was lying to myself. The Covenant would kill everyone they thought had been collaborating with the “monsters,” and then they’d come looking for me. If we ran, I could never go home, and Sam’s home would be destroyed. We’d be alone together forever, and while I liked him a lot, I didn’t know if I could learn to love him under those circumstances. We’d make ourselves into exiles, not even knowing if we’d still like each other in a year. It wouldn’t be right. It wouldn’t be fair.