Page 21 of Magic for Nothing

“Chloe,” said Joanne sharply. “Do not taunt our guest.”

“Is she a guest now, Mum? I thought she was still a prisoner. Possible spy. Or did the blood test results come back already?” She smiled in my direction. “In case that didn’t make sense, while you were asleep my dear brother stuck a needle in your arm, and took a bit of your blood for analysis. Have to make sure you’re a human being, and not some unspeakable terror trying to infiltrate and devour our delicious flesh. What do you think of that?”

“I think I wish they’d waited until I was awake and could give permission, but I understand why it had to be done,” I said. Blood analysis is still the best way to detect certain types of human-seeming cryptid, like dragon or wadjet females. Fortunately for me, my blood didn’t have any secrets to betray. “It explains why I’m so hungry, though. Can someone please pass the lamb?”

Chloe looked nonplussed. Apparently, I wasn’t rising to the bait the way I was supposed to. That’s me, always ruining everyone’s fun.

“Reginald tells us you belonged to the Black Family Carnival,” said Hasin. He sounded Scottish rather than English, with a more pronounced accent, especially on his consonants. “Terrible what happened to them.”

He didn’t say “what happened to your family.” I took note of that, even as I cast my eyes toward my plate and said, “I wasn’t there. I should have been there. I know there probably wouldn’t have been anything I could have done, but maybe . . . maybe one more person would have made the carnival seem like a big enough target not to be worth taking. Maybe . . .”

“It wouldn’t have made a bit of difference,” said an older female voice. I glanced up to find Louise Cunningham looking at me sympathetically. No matter what else happened, I could apparently snow grandma. “Apraxis wasps have been known to destroy entire towns, when they were desperate enough for new minds to absorb. You would have been taken with the rest if you’d been there.”

“You can’t know that for sure,” I said, barely above a whisper.

“No, I can’t, and neither can you. But I can be confident enough to tell you that what happened to your family wasn’t your fault.” She shook her head a little. “You mustn’t blame yourself for things you didn’t do and couldn’t have prevented. That way lies madness.”

“It’s interesting that your response to what happened wasn’t to tell yourself that monsters aren’t real and try to find another explanation,” said Chloe. “Most people refuse to believe the truth, even when it’s staring them right in the face. What’s so special about you?”

Wow: dinner and an inquisition. I took a deep breath. “I know this is going to sound a little unbelievable, but when I was a kid, I saw a Bigfoot . . .” I began.

Somewhere in the middle of my story, even Chloe started to nod. Maybe I didn’t have them yet, but I was getting there.

Maybe this was going to work out after all.

Six

“When your back’s to the wall, just remember: you’re allowed to take those bastards with you.”

—Alice Healy

Handcuffed to the frame of an unmarked black van, being driven through the English countryside

“YOU REALIZE THIS ISN’T NECESSARY,” I said, keeping my voice as level as possible. My wrists ached from all the bouncing around. I’d be lucky to get out of this without at least a couple of bone-deep bruises. My things were strapped next to me, and I had to fight not to look at them. I hadn’t seen Mindy in three days, not since I’d arrived in London and started the slow, delicate process of convincing the Covenant that I was as clueless and eager as I appeared.

She was a smart mouse. She knew what’d she signed up for, and she’d made her peace with the colony before we’d left Portland. There was plenty of food in the bottom of the bag, along with a bottle of water she had the manual dexterity to open. She was fine. She had to be fine. If she wasn’t fine . . .

My brother had taken six mice to Australia with him, and he came back with five. The Aeslin don’t blame him—the Aeslin never blame their gods for anything—but he blames himself. He probably always will. There’s a flip side to being worshipped by something as innocent and earnest as an Aeslin mouse, and it’s knowing that when something bad happens to them, you were supposed to be able to prevent it. You were supposed to be able to protect them. Failure hurts more than anything.

Leo made an apologetic face. I swallowed the urge to slap it off. It wasn’t like I could, anyway. Stupid handcuffs. “I’m sorry,” he said. “This is standard protocol.”

“I put up with the chloroform and the weird questions and being woken up in the middle of the night so you could see if sleep deprivation made my story change.” Although if jet lag hadn’t changed it, I doubted a little drowsiness was going to; they hadn’t thought that one through. “I don’t understand what’s going on.”

“What’s going on is your story has checked out enough that we’re taking you to the recruitment center,” he said. “The bookshop is a family business, Annie. We’re not equipped to train new people, and even if we were, Mum would never let us keep you there. It’s unseemly.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard that word used in an actual sentence before,” I said.

Leo laughed. “I’ll miss having you around. I’m at the recruitment center with reasonable frequency, so I’ll still see you, but it won’t be the same as sharing a bathroom.”

I eyed him dubiously. I still couldn’t get a good read on him, and if I didn’t know better, I’d assume he was trying to flirt. But he couldn’t be trying to flirt, because no human being with the brains to dress themselves in the morning would think flirting with a girl they had chained to a van’s internal frame was a good idea. “I wouldn’t say we were sharing a bathroom, since your house has five of them,” I said. “I grew up in a carnival. Mobile home chemical toilets are about what I’m used to. Your house was the lap of luxury.”

“We’ve had it for a long time,” he said, as if the family home wouldn’t fetch several million pounds on the current London real estate market. “It’s going to be fine. The recruitment center is set up for intake and education. They’ll be able to help you avenge your family.”

“And I’m handcuffed because . . . ?”

“Because you have to look at things from our perspective for a moment, all right? You came out of nowhere. You went straight for the only safe house we have in central London. Your story checks out, and Lord knows you talk like a carnie, but we have to take precautions in case you’re working for the enemy.”

“I’m not a wasp,” I said, yanking on my handcuffs as if in punctuation.