“Well, it’s best if you try to avoid him, and any other trainspotters they have, just to be sure.”
Fern frowned. “What’s a trainspotter?”
“Do you know what a routewitch is?” asked Mary.
“No.”
“Okay. Trainspotters are a sort of routewitch. Routewitches draw power from travel, usually on the highway, but any form of travel will do. They’re the most powerful of the journey magicians in general. Trainspotters only get power from trains. They need to be surrounded by a shell of manmade machine that someone else controls for them to tap into whatever the universe is trying to tell them. Interestingly, this makes them better at scrying, at picking apart the threads of reality and seeing what’s true and underneath them. If the Covenant knew how to work with trainspotters without killing them, we’d all be in trouble.”
Fern looked at me. I shrugged. “You can’t keep a trainspotter captive without breaking their connection to the rails,” I said. “The Covenant has their magic-users, but as far as I know, they’ve never managed to catch a road witch of any sort, and certainly not a trainspotter.”
“They’ve had a few umbramancers, and those are technically journey magicians,” said Mary. “That’s neither here nor there. Annie, if you’re going to work with these people, you have to avoid the trainspotter.”
“That shouldn’t be too hard.” Privately, I wasn’t so sure. I had no idea how their structure worked.
But that woman nearly died today, and she was going to need years of surgery and physical therapy before she could recover, assuming she ever truly would. If I’d been better able to control the fire, I might have spared her at least some of that suffering. I definitely wouldn’t have burned my hands. Whether it was a good idea or not, I needed the training, and these were the only people who were offering it to me.
“They must have some powerful wards on their headquarters,” said Mary. “That would explain why you blinked out like that. As soon as you were on their home ground, you were hidden from everyone who might be looking for you. Even me.”
“And you’re a family ghost,” I said, with a frown. “This is good, though. If you can’t find me, the Covenant can’t find me.”
“You can’t hide in their space forever.”
“No, but it’s good to know that I have someplace to run where the Covenant won’t be able to stick a pin in me.” I took a bite of chicken, actually chewing this time before I said, “I’m going to let him train me. The fire is getting stronger, and I’m having more and more trouble keeping it under control. I’ll be a danger to myself and others if I don’t figure this out soon.”
“I’m not going to stop you,” said Mary. “But I have three requests, and none of them are negotiable.”
“Okay,” I said. “Shoot.”
“First, you call for me immediately after every session you have. I may not always be able to come. I’ll hear you, and I’ll know that you’re all right.”
“Deal.”
“Second, if you wind up alone with that trainspotter—with any trainspotter, at any point—you run. I don’t care if you have to abandon everything you own, you run. There’s too much about you that no one needs to know.”
I looked at her and nodded silently. Mary will protect me to the ends of the Earth and beyond. I’ve always known that about her. But if it’s a choice between just me and the rest of the family, she’s going to take the option that saves the most of us. She has the luxury of knowing that death is not the end. If she had to leave me in the path of a moving truck to pull both my siblings to safety, she’d just get to spend a few years teaching me how to be a better ghost. Not the worst thing that’s ever happened.
“Third . . .” Mary took a deep, unnecessary breath, held it for a moment, and let it out before saying, “You don’t have enough backup. You need more. You need to let me tell Sam where to find you.”
“Absolutely not,” I said. “Out of the question. I ran away from him so he wouldn’t be in danger.”
“Oh, and not because you were afraid that Antimony Price, the Ice Queen, might be starting to thaw?”
Fern put her hand up. “Who’s Sam?”
“A friend,” I said, as Mary said, “Annie’s boyfriend.” We stopped and glared at each other across the counter, which wasn’t doing nearly enough to provide either one of us with cover.
Fern blinked. “Annie has a boyfriend?”
“Yes,” said Mary, and “No,” I said, again at the same time, again followed by glaring.
“Huh,” said Fern. She paused before asking, more delicately, “Has he actually met you when you were being you, or did he only ever meet you when you were pretending to be somebody else? Because you can be really sweet when you’re pretending to be somebody else.”
I threw a biscuit at her.
Fern laughed as she dodged. “You’re only angry because it’s true.”
“No, it’s not; I was myself the whole time I knew Sam.” Or at least a version of myself. A version who didn’t have anything to worry about beyond the borders of a carnival, and a boy who might have loved her, if he’d only been given the time. “And we’re not calling him here. It’s not safe.”
“It isn’t safe for anyone,” said Mary. “Not Fern, not me, and certainly not you. Why should it be any different for Sam?”
“Because . . .” I hesitated. “Because he didn’t ask for any of this.”
Mary’s smile was small, and sad. “Oh, peaches,” she said. “You think any of us did?”
The phone rang. We all turned to look at it.
It was a small idiosyncrasy in the Lowryland housing rules that every household had to include a fixed landline. We could all have cellphones—we were expected to, and those of us who lived on-property but had bad or absent credit could finance them through Lowry, Inc.—but we had to keep a landline, in case of emergencies. That way, no matter what happened, the company could say they had at the very least made a good-faith effort to contact us.
“You’re closest,” said Fern meekly.
I was also the one with the wrapped-up hands. I decided not to mention that as I turned and pawed the receiver off the wall, managing finally to get it wedged between my cheek and shoulder.
“Hello?” I said.
“There’s a ghost in your apartment,” said Emily.
I glanced at Mary, who was looking at me with both eyebrows raised. “Yes,” I said.
“Do you want it there?”
The question was casual, but the many things it meant were anything but. Emily was a routewitch. She could ward my home against Mary in a heartbeat. I didn’t know whether she could do it from a distance. I had to assume yes. Routewitches are all about distance, and this one was short enough to be effectively null.
“Yes,” I said firmly. “It’s the relative I told you about.”
Mary’s eyebrows climbed higher.
“Do you know what kind of ghost it is?”
There was the five-million-dollar question. If the Lowryland cabal was on my side, my answer wouldn’t change anything: a dead aunt was a dead aunt, even if I was pretending she was a dead grandmother, and all dead relatives were worth preserving. If they were secretly the bad guys, having access to a crossroads ghost would be a temptation too far.
“Road ghost,” I said. “That’s all she’s ever been willing to tell us. She died on the road, and now she’s a road ghost.”
“Ah,” said Emily. “Colin was very displeased to hear that you’d been injured. Your shifts for tomorrow have been cancelled due to medical reasons. He expects you at his office by nine AM.”
The line went dead. I hung the phone up gingerly, turning to fully face the others.
“Guess I’ve got class in the morning,” I said.
“Guess I’m going to talk to a man about a monkey,” said Mary, and disappeared.
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My eyes went wide and my fingers went hot. “Mary?” I squawked. “Mary!”
She didn’t reappear.
I covered my face with my hands. Fern patted me awkwardly on the shoulder.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “Maybe he won’t come.”
I groaned.
Ten
“Believe me, I want to be here even less than you do. Now, are we going to fight like civilized people, or am I going to stand here and taunt you?”
–Jane Harrington-Price
The Public Relations building of Lowryland, at way too goddamn early in the morning
EITHER COLIN DIDN’T TRUST me or he didn’t trust the Lowryland train system, because when I opened my apartment door at eight-thirty, there was a sleek black car idling at the curb. Fern and Megan clustered in the doorway behind me, staring.
Megan made a clucking noise with her tongue. “Whoever he is, marry him and keep us in the style to which we’d like to become accustomed.”
“He works in Public Relations.”
“Whoever he is, murder him and make it look like an accident, but make sure you get away with his wallet,” Megan amended.
“Thanks for the vote of murder-confidence,” I said.
She flashed me a bright, toothy smile. “I always have faith in you when it comes to murder.”
Fern tugged on my arm. When I turned to face her, she reached up and pulled me into a hug with suddenly heavy arms, effectively trapping me long enough for her to whisper, “Be careful,” in my ear.
She let me go. I nodded, trying to show that I understood, before I stepped into the humid morning air and walked down the path toward the waiting car. The sky was bruised black along the horizon, speaking of a storm to come. When I opened the car’s rear door, a blast of air-conditioning nearly rocked me back on my heels.
“Hello,” I said. “I’m Melody West. Are you here for me?”
“Get in,” said the driver gruffly.
I got in.
The car’s interior was real leather, and smelled buttery and rich, like I was wrapped in a cocoon made of nothing but the idea of money. I sank into it, trying not to do the math on how long this car could have paid for my groceries, and failing.
My family isn’t poor. We do a lot of work for the cryptid community, and while they may not all pay in money as humans understand it, the barter system can turn into money easily enough, and we have really good accountants who truly understand the process of making our income look believable. But my parents believe we should know how to be hungry, because things like that can be a disorienting shock to the system otherwise. I could balance a budget by the time I was sixteen, and I’d spent enough summers eating elbow macaroni and stewed tomatoes with the Campbell Family Carnival to genuinely respect how much easier money made things.
This car wasn’t just about being expensive or being easier than the cheaper alternatives: it was about making sure people knew the owner had money, enough to burn it on all-leather interiors and the latest bells and whistles. There was even a bottle of water in the holder between the seats, cold enough for beads of moisture to be forming on the outside.
“You’re late,” said the driver gruffly.
“It’s eight-thirty,” I said. “My lessons don’t begin until nine.”
“Which means being there at nine,” he said. “You should have come out three minutes ago. Buckle your seatbelt.”
I fastened my seatbelt—that’s never been the kind of instruction I needed to receive twice—but I was still surprised when he rammed his foot down on the gas and sent us racing out of the apartment complex, heading for the nearest highway at a speed that seemed designed to attract the attention of the local police and make us even later. That was, until he reached under the dashboard and produced a blue bubble light, which he set in front of the steering wheel. It flashed rhythmically, and the traffic melted away in front of us.
“You’re a cop?” I asked warily.
“Lowryland Security,” he replied.
“Huh,” I said.
We weren’t on Park property. It was questionable whether we were even on Lowry property. They owned a disturbing amount of the land around here, including pieces that no one would expect, neighborhoods filled with single-family homes, strip malls, even supposedly public parks. No one associated those places with Lowry, but look deep enough and the trails of ownership were clear. That didn’t give Park Security any authority there.
The flashing blue light was setting my teeth on edge. I tried to focus on it, and found that I couldn’t; my eyes skittered away from the moment of the flash. Something about it wasn’t right.
But it sure did make the drive easier. We pulled up to the backlot gates with eight minutes to spare, and my driver even stopped the car when we reached the PR building. I reached for the handle. The door was locked.
I was considering whether or not to get worried when the door opened from the outside, revealing my driver. “We’re here,” he said.
“Great.” I unfastened my belt and slid out. The man was close to seven feet tall, and built like a wide receiver from the NFL. “Anybody ever tell you that you’re incredibly tall?”
He didn’t even crack a smile. “Get inside,” he said.
“Yes, sir,” I said, and turned, walking away as quickly as my little feet would carry me. The man wasn’t as unsettling as his little blue light, but something about him made me think that lingering in his presence wouldn’t be a good idea.
The air-conditioning inside the PR building was turned up even higher than it had been in the car. Emily was waiting for me in the lobby. She wrinkled her nose at the sight of my yoga pants and tank top, and asked, “Don’t you own any real clothing?”
“I’m a minimum wage Park employee,” I said. “If I can’t get it for a discount at the company store, I don’t own it.”
“We’re going to have to fix that,” she said, and sniffed, like the mere sight of synthetic fibers offended her. “Come on. You don’t want to be late.” She spun on one perfectly shaped heel and stalked down the hall toward the elevator, leaving me to hurry after her.
At least it didn’t look like we were taking the magical stairway to absolutely nowhere this morning. “I’m getting that idea,” I said, once I had managed to catch up. “Do you have any idea what’s going to happen today?”
“You’re going to earn our faith in you.” Emily stopped in front of the elevator and pressed the button. It lit up. She pressed it three more times anyway, doing an impatient little jig with her knees. “We don’t get much new blood around here.”
“Bad reputation?”
She rolled her eyes. “Please. We offer a health plan. We have the best reputation of any cabal this side of the Mississippi River—and did you see that bullshit the LA folks pulled on live television last year? Right now, I think we’re the best regarded cabal in the country.”
“Then why?”
“Because there isn’t much new blood to get.” For the first time, the muscles around Emily’s eyes relaxed, her gaze softening, becoming less predatory and more wistful. “You don’t know how much you’ve missed.”
The elevator doors opened with a ding before I could say anything, and the moment passed: Emily’s mask of cool disdain snapped right back into place as she waved imperiously for me to get into the tiny, featureless box. The urge to balk was high. There’s a word for people who follow strangers into places with no clear escape route, and it’s not “survivor.”
But there was fire in my fingers and inertia at my heels: I didn’t want to run again, or try starting over in a place where luck might not be on my side. And luck had been on my side since choosing to come to Lowryland. How else could I explain just happening to stumble across my old high school cheer captain—or even having the Melody West ID in my go bag, when I was supposed to have buried her yea
rs ago? The cabal was big and scary and unknown. They were also offering to help me get myself under control before someone got seriously hurt. My lucky streak hadn’t failed me yet.
It was going to. Lucky streaks always do. For the moment, I needed to let my bets ride, and roll the dice again.
Emily smirked as I joined her in the elevator. That seemed to be her default expression. “Timid, new girl?”
“You know, you should be played by Natalie Dormer in the movie,” I replied flatly. “You have the right mix of mean and murderous.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” she said. She pressed a button. The doors slid shut. “Let’s go over the rules for today.”
“Since you haven’t told me what they are, can you really expect me to go over them?”
Emily rolled her eyes. “I hate new girls,” she said. “You always think you’re so clever, and you’re so very wrong. Rule one: do as you’re told. Colin knows what he’s doing and you don’t, so if he’s giving you an instruction, he has a good reason. You can ask questions—in fact, asking questions is rule two—but you need to listen.”
“Got it,” I said.
“No, you don’t, but I believe you’ll try, and that’s honestly more than some of us are expecting from you. Rule three is going to be harder. You need to remember that you are a guest here, in our space and in Lowryland, and comport yourself accordingly.”
“Got it. Use my manners.”
“Lady of the Underpass preserve me,” muttered Emily. The elevator doors opened, revealing a large, empty room that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a suburban dojo or dance studio. One wall was mirrored; another was clear glass, showing what felt like all of Florida from a seemingly impossible height. I was suddenly very glad never to have suffered from vertigo.
Once again, Emily placed her hand between my shoulders and shoved, pushing me out of the elevator and into the wide, empty room.
“Have fun,” she said. The elevator doors closed on her smirking face, and she was gone.