Magic for Nothing

by Seanan McGuire

  Gripping the safety bar, I straightened and turned in a slow circle, getting an idea of the landscape. The bone yard was dark. There were still a few RVs, trucks and vehicles deserted by their owners to create the impression that the show was normal, but the lights were off for the first time I could remember. The carnival sat in a field of nothingness, moonlight flooding the wide boulevards formed by rides and games and concessions. This was where I would stand. This was where I would fight. For the carnival, for the people who’d never asked to be a part of this, and yes, for my family, because every fight against the Covenant on American soil is a fight for my family. We chose freedom when we walked away. It was up to me to show that the choice had been the right one.

  Nothing moved. I stood there, waiting for something to change, and when the change came, I nearly fell off the Ferris wheel—which would have been a swift, ignominious end to my adventure. I caught myself at the last moment, watching as the midway lights finished coming on, casting everything in a hundred candy-colored shades. The wheel began to turn, my swing descending toward the ground. There was no one at the controls. Whoever threw the switch must have shorted something out, because the Ferris wheel wasn’t the only ride running under its own steam.

  A dozen conflicting songs drifted from various rides, ranging from the spooky soundtrack of the haunted house to the tinkling fairy chimes of the carousel. I watched for people, but didn’t see any, until the Ferris wheel was close enough to the ground for me to hop off. Drawing a knife from inside my shirt, I began walking, slowly and carefully, toward the front gate.

  I was almost there when someone grabbed me from behind.

  Twenty-three

  “When the time comes, shoot to kill. Anything less is beneath you.”

  —Frances Brown

  The midway of the Spenser and Smith Family Carnival, about to break somebody’s nose

  I WHIPPED AROUND, hand already raised, knife primed to release, and froze as I found myself looking at Leo Cunningham. Seeing him here was a shock. Seeing the relief in his eyes was somehow an even greater shock, like he’d been dropped in from an entirely different story.

  “Leo?” I managed to squeak, voice cracking.

  “Annie, thank God,” he said, ignoring the knife as he threw his arms around me and squeezed me tight. “When you didn’t check in, well. I won’t pretend I wasn’t concerned.”

  “Seriously, Leo?!” I pushed him away. I didn’t have to feign my shock or dismay as I demanded, “What are you doing here? You don’t do fieldwork!”

  His expression softened, melting into a sort of sympathetic understanding. I fought the urge to slap that look clean off of his face. “Ah, of course. Annie, I know this must be all very confusing for you. Robert called the rest of the team in three days ago. We’re going to help wipe this demon-infested traveling carnival off the face of the planet.”

  “But . . . but I thought we were going to let them go once we knew that they weren’t hurting anyone,” I stammered. “Margaret said . . .”

  “Margaret didn’t want to upset you. It was only natural for you to sympathize with these people. They’re much like the ones you lost, aren’t they? But the ones you lost were human.”

  “So are the people here.”

  “No,” said Leonard, and his voice was poisonously gentle, filled with a conviction I could hear but never share. It was the sort of voice people use with children who don’t understand how the world works, and I hated him for it, even as I was obscurely grateful. If he was talking to me like this—if he was talking down to me like this—it was going to be a lot easier to kick his ass. “They’re traitors to their own kind. They’ve harbored monsters. People have died. It’s time for all of this to end.”

  I had one more card to play. It wasn’t a good one. It was better than murder. “I thought you had to keep a low profile in North America, to keep those Price people from coming for you. Wiping out a whole carnival isn’t keeping a low profile.”

  “They’ll never know it was us,” said Leo reassuringly. “I promise you that. We’re quite good at covering our tracks. We’ve done this before. A little resistance was never enough to make us turn our backs on the people who needed us.”

  I stared at him. He smiled, clearly mistaking my dismay for surprise.

  “Your job is done, Annie. We’re not going to make you help with the cleansing, not as a trainee—not unless you wanted to.” He held out his hand, beckoning me. “I’d be happy to show you what to do.”

  “What to do?” I asked. “I’m pretty sure I know what an invitation from the Dark Side looks like, thanks.”

  “What?” His smile melted into dismay. “What are you talking about?”

  “And you didn’t even offer me cookies,” I spat, and punched him in the nose.

  Leonard Cunningham was an experienced operative of the Covenant of St. George, trained in all the ways to fight and evade the “monsters” he’d dedicated his life to destroying. He had not, apparently, been trained in the way to fight or evade being punched in the nose by a woman he regarded as a harmless trainee. He went down like a sack of potatoes. I turned and ran like hell for the other end of the midway.

  There was no way Reginald Cunningham would have allowed his grandson and heir to come to the States without backup: three people might be enough to cleanse a carnival, but not when one of those people was going to inherit the whole shebang. I had to assume there were at least four agents active and on the ground in the carnival now—maybe more, depending on how seriously they’d taken this incursion, and whether or not they’d really been expecting me to help them take out the carnival.

  There were over a hundred people working here. What could they possibly have been planning that would take out that many noncombatants with less than an army?

  The lights had come on without warning, and the rides all activated at the same time. That was more than a glitch; that was sabotage, pure and simple, the sort of thing that would normally have brought half the show running. The engineers would have been at the front of the pack, followed by the lookie-loos who wanted to be the first to see what was broken and carry the gossip back to the rest of the carnival.

  Pop quiz: what do you call a distraction that draws people in, rather than pushing them away? Answer: a trap. You call it a trap.

  Wishing for Sam’s speed or my roller skates or at least dry ground—anything to increase my speed just that tiny fraction—I ran, head down, arms pumping. If I’d encountered another member of the Covenant field team during that run, I wouldn’t have hesitated to kill them. Maybe it was murder and maybe it was a form of existential self-defense, or maybe they had actually managed that tiny sliver of indoctrination, and made me stop thinking of the people who opposed me as human beings. Whatever the reason for my change of heart, I was still grateful when no one appeared to make me prove it.

  This was a field when it didn’t have a carnival in it: it didn’t have the infrastructure to run the midway, much less a bunch of power-sucking beasts like the Scrambler and the little coaster. The solution was simple enough, and was universal to carnivals the world over now that even the smallest traveling show boasted electric lights and moving machines—a generator array had been established in the ride alley inside a shed disguised as a supply booth, tucked between the Scrambler and the Centrifuge, a giant spinning bowl that plastered people to its sides with the power of physics. Any power tampering would start there.

  The door was open when I came skidding down the aisle, feet slipping in the mud and breath catching in my throat. I barreled onward, catching the edge of the door and swinging myself into the darkened shed.

  The blinking digital display on the bomb was more than bright enough to catch my attention.

  “Shit.” Flipping the light switch struck me as a singularly bad idea. If I’d been trying to get a bunch of carnies to blow themselves up, wiring the light swit
ch into the trigger mechanism would have been the best way to go about it. I didn’t have a flashlight, but I had the fire in my fingers, and I had the bright banners hanging from the outside of the shed, camouflaging it as just another part of the scenery. I leaned out and yanked a strip of fabric down, wadding it into a ball and focusing on it as hard as I can.

  Come on, I thought. Come on, come on, this is a stupid, pointless skill, and I’m going to get some use out of it now, so come on.

  The wadded-up fabric burst into flame. I managed not to drop it, which might have put out the fire, and instead set it on the muddy ground, trusting the dampness to keep the fire from starting too soon. The light it cast wasn’t much, but it was enough to let me see what they’d done. The shed was wired to blow, with the timer mechanism and blasting caps both connected to a massive block of what looked like bright yellow modeling clay. That color and that shape could only mean one thing: Semtex. Because that was exactly what I needed tonight.

  I’ve played with Semtex before, under controlled circumstances. It’s pretty stable, as plastic explosives go, and it packs one hell of a kick. That block would be enough to vaporize anyone within twenty feet of the blast, and to damage a hell of a lot more than just that. I was right. This was a trap.

  Only three wires connected the Semtex to the rest of the device. They weren’t colored—that would have been too easy—and at least one of them was going to be a dummy. Cutting it wouldn’t do anything, but could lead me to think I’d defused the bomb when I really hadn’t. That left me two “live” wires. Cut one and save the day; cut the other and blow myself to smithereens. It would almost have been better if the bomb had been more sophisticated. The more moving pieces a bomb has, the easier it is to get an idea of how the manufacturer thought, and how to break what they spent so much time on making.

  (Sure, it’s also easier to blow yourself up, but there’s a reason most police departments have access to a dedicated bomb squad. It’s always easy to blow yourself up. I’m an amateur who mostly plays around with black powder and dynamite—the Looney Toons of explosive weaponry. Anything more elaborate than that is trending toward “out of my league.”)

  I stared at the bomb, all too aware of the open flame behind me and the fact that time was passing. They might have put the blasting caps on a timer, in case the carnies were too slow getting here. Or someone might have refused to evacuate when Emery told them to go, and be on their way to find out why the rides were on. I needed to do something.

  There were three wires. Cutting any of them could mean either salvation or a death sentence. There was one block of Semtex.

  There was a loophole.

  Leaning forward, I gingerly grasped the block of plastic explosives, aware that if it was old and unstable, or if the Covenant bomber had done a halfway-competent job, I was about to die. But a big explosion would bring the local authorities and destroy the carnival in a way insurance wouldn’t pay for, and I couldn’t do that to them. They deserved the chance to get away clean and start over, without me or the Covenant breathing down their necks. I had promised Emery I’d try. I was trying.

  “Okay,” I said, with a deep breath. “Here goes nothing . . . Mary! I need you! Betelgeuse, Betelgeuse, Betelgeuse!”

  “You know I hate it when you call me like that,” snapped Mary, materializing air next to me. “Also, sometimes, I’m going to be busy. Like, you get that, right? I have a life aside from babysitting y—”

  If I asked, she’d have to involve the crossroads, and so I didn’t ask as I yanked the Semtex away from the wall and hurled it at her, blasting caps and all. She had time to make a horrified face before she disappeared, taking the explosives with her. The bomb’s digital control beeped once and sparked fruitlessly. There was nothing left for it to trigger.

  “She’s going to kill me for blowing up the ghost world,” I muttered, and looked around the shed, settling on the repair kit next to the door. My makeshift torch was going out, but it still provided me with just enough light to see the flare gun when I opened the toolbox. I grinned ferally, grabbed the gun, and ran.

  The dark rides were mixed in with the bigger power sucks, making it easier to control crowd flow. I ran until I found the ride I wanted. Then I stopped, turned to face the rest of the show, and pulled the trigger on my borrowed flare gun. A red flower blossomed in the sky above me. I stood my ground, waiting.

  It wasn’t a long wait. Three figures ran around the Scrambler, two female, one male. I recognized the man as Robert and one of the women as Margaret. The third was a mystery to me, but as she was running in step with the other two, it wasn’t a stretch to guess that she was Covenant. I aimed my flare gun at them and pulled the trigger again, forcing them to leap to the side to avoid being hit by a burning projectile. Now that they were well and truly pissed, I gave them a jaunty little wave, turned, and ran straight into the Haunted House.

  As a dark ride, the Haunted House depended on a fixed track system that pulled the individual carriages through the scenes that had been constructed inside. The carriages were slow, ostensibly to give people time to take in the horrors around them, but really to make sure the townies felt like they were getting their money’s worth from what was honestly one of the less thrilling attractions. There were no live performers—usually—and plastic skeletons just aren’t enough to send the youth of today into an ecstasy of terror. As one of the youth of today, I know it takes a lot more than a few stuffed bats on strings to scare me.

  Like, say, being pursued into a dark ride by three members of the Covenant of St. George. That was something I found plenty scary.

  The carriages rolled by as I ran into the ride, following the track until I came to the Mad Scientist’s Lab. Ducking behind the stereotypically green monster on his slab, I drew two knives from inside my shirt and crouched down, every muscle tense, every nerve on fire. At least my fingertips weren’t heating up this time. Apparently, I had managed to let off enough of a spark in dealing with the bomb that I was going to need a little time to build it up again.

  “Annie, darling, where are you?” The voice was Robert’s, pitched low and sweet, virtually a purr. I stayed where I was, crouching down farther. “Come out, dearest, and we’ll have a little chat about your behavior. This doesn’t have to hurt, you know. Not unless you want it to.”

  I said nothing.

  “I’ll admit, I saw this coming. I told Reginald, I said ‘she’s too new, she’s too green, they’ll turn her head.’ But I didn’t think you’d be this willing to betray us. We’re your family now, Annie. Come home to your family. Let us take care of you.”

  The way he said “care” made it clear I wouldn’t enjoy whatever they were going to do to me. A lot of it depended on how much value the Covenant placed on me as a North American agent. They’d been kind up until this point, trying to woo me to their way of thinking. I had absolutely no doubt that they could be cruel, if they thought it would get them what they wanted.

  I crouched lower, knives at the ready, wishing I’d thought to keep a little bit of that plastic explosive for my own use. Blowing him up wouldn’t have been practical, but oh, it would have felt good.

  “Annie, Annie, there’s no need to be like this. These carnival folk, they’ve been kind to you, but they’re never going to love you the way we will. At least in part because they’re all going to be dead before morning. Leonard’s out there right now, slitting throats and making sure there are no survivors.”

  Leo was doing no such thing. Leo was unconscious in the mud outside the sideshow attractions, and when he woke up, he was going to have one hell of a headache. There’d been no blood on his hands when he’d come looking for me. I’d been more of a priority for him than his orders. Poor fool.

  “Oh, Annie.” Robert’s voice came from right behind me. Slowly, I turned, and there he was, bending to look under the slab where I was hiding. He smiled at the sight of me, expression g
rim in the black light illumination of the artificial lab. “I really thought better of you than this.”

  His hand lashed toward my face. I moved without thinking, bringing up the first of my knives and slashing hard across his fingers. My knives were designed for throwing, not cutting, but they had an edge on them; without it, they wouldn’t have been able to pierce my targets the way they needed to. Robert bellowed. I rolled backward, flinging my bloodied knife at him as soon as I came upright again. It embedded itself in his shoulder. He bellowed again, louder this time, the sound filled with pure anger.

  I turned and ran.

  My theory of combat is simple: keep it as far away from myself as I can. I am a soft, squishy creature, with lots of moving pieces, and I want to keep all those moving pieces safely contained inside my skin. I’d been working with Robert for months, but we’d never sparred, and I didn’t know his preferred weapons. He could be carrying anything. In lieu of more information, my best approach was a swift retreat.

  I ran through the abandoned Transylvanian village and the hall of funhouse mirrors, dodging slow-moving carriages all the way. Next up was the swamp, where I could take cover behind the plastic banyan trees. I could—

  Someone grabbed my arm, yanking me behind a mirror. I balled my hand into a fist and swung, hitting only empty air. Sam let go of me, giving me an offended look. He was back in human form, which meant that he was either tense, making an effort, or both.

  “Punching?” he asked, in a low voice. “Really?”

  “What are you doing here?” I hissed. “You’re supposed to be evacuating the bone yard.”

  “It’s done. They’re gone. Everyone’s gone.” He continued to look at me admonishingly. “Did you honestly think you could punch me? I’m so much faster than you that’s almost insulting.”

  “Sam.” I grabbed the front of his shirt, pulling him toward me. This time, he didn’t dodge. “The Covenant is here. In this building. They set a bomb in the generator shed. They’re not fucking around. You need to get out of here.”