But I’d never seen myself isolated from my family. I didn’t even have any mice with me. Whatever happened to me here, no one was going to witness or remember it. I was the first member of our family to be without a piece of our institutional memory since Elizabeth Matheson had discovered a colony of Aeslin mice worshipping a chicken in her yard.
Aeslin mice: hyper-religious, hyper-loyal, and totally devoted to my family. Oh, and they talk. Standard protocol says that none of us go anywhere without a mouse, since that way, if anything happens, the mouse might be able to make it back and tell the story. I’d started my journey with a mouse. Mindy, a member of my personal priesthood, had accompanied me to England to make sure that if something happened to me, word would get back to my family. We’d picked up another mouse there, Mork, a member of the colony that stayed behind when my great-great-grandparents quit the Covenant. He was the only English Aeslin I’d met. The rest preferred to stay in hiding, at least until their representative was able to come back and prove that our colony wasn’t a bunch of mouse-eating monsters. It was clever. It was the right way to do things.
The last time I’d seen either Mork or Mindy, I’d been in the process of leaving them with my maybe-boyfriend, Sam, who’d promised to get them to the airport so that they could get back to the rest of my family. According to my dead Aunt Mary, they’d made it. They were fine. That was probably the only reason my mother wasn’t burning the world down to find me.
Being the youngest child in my family has sometimes meant feeling like an afterthought, the kid conceived to be a blood donor to the two that actually mattered. But even when I’d been feeling like that, I never questioned whether my parents loved me, or whether they would charge into the gates of hell to snatch me back if they thought they could get away with it. That was one more reason I needed to stay in hiding. If they knew where to find me, they would come to bring me home, and then . . .
Most tracking spells work better when there’s no interference around the person who’s being tracked. My family lives in a survivalist compound outside of Portland. We’ve always used isolation as one of our greatest strengths. Put me in the building, and it could become an even greater weakness.
Context is everything.
The traffic was heavy around us, cars packed with tourists heading for Lowryland mingling with cars packed with employees heading for Lowryland. Part of why Fern liked to stretch out in the backseat when we got a ride to work was the crowd. When we went bumper to bumper—not an everyday occurrence, but not as rare as I’d like either—people got bored and peered into the cars around them, looking for a karaoke show, or a nose-picker, or an interesting dog. Even out of costume, there was a chance Fern would be recognized. Annual Passholders were notorious for learning to identify individual performers, and they could cause problems when encountered “off the clock.”
(The scariest incident we’d had so far had been at the Target, of all places. Fern and I had been looking at canned goods when a hand clamped down on her arm and someone started dragging her away, pulling her several feet before she’d managed to increase her density to the point where she couldn’t be moved anymore. And then I’d punched the asshole in the gut. He’d fallen over, threatening to call store security and to notify Lowryland about a misbehaving princess. We’d run. When Fern made her security report, she had left me out, claiming that the puncher was a “helpful stranger,” and since it hadn’t happened on Park property, it hadn’t been pursued. But we’d been a lot more careful since then, and we always went shopping in a group.)
The employee turnoff loomed up ahead. Megan tightened her hands on the wheel, an involuntary gesture that broadcast, loudly, how much she didn’t want to take it.
“I could keep driving,” she said, voice light and sincere. “We could head for the coast. Just the three of us, surf, sand . . .”
“Unemployment,” I said. “I need this job. You need your residency.”
“I need a bathroom,” said Fern.
“Fern needs a bathroom,” I said. “Sad but true: we have to go to work.”
“Spoilsport,” said Megan, and made the turn.
The traffic was lighter here. Most Lowryland employees take the train, and the rest of us tend to carpool, since the parking lot is a nightmare wasteland where people have come to blows over the “good” spots. Megan wasn’t parking. She pulled up to the employee drop-off point, where a line had already formed of cast members waiting for the bus that would take them to the backstage entrance to the Park.
“Let the magic begin,” I muttered and opened the door. “See you tonight?”
“Sweet Medusa, I hope not,” said Megan. “You need to sleep, or you’re going to wind up stabbing somebody.”
“Only if they deserve it,” I said.
Megan was laughing as I closed the door. Fern and I turned to wave before joining the line. In the distance, the bright lights of Lowryland were warming up for another day, splitting the sky into candy-colored segments, like something out of someone else’s dream. Not mine. Never mine.
Clutching the strap of my purse, I shoved my misery and loneliness down as far as it would go. Time to go to work.
Three
“We all have to do things we don’t want to do in this life. For example, right now, I have to keep not shooting you.”
–Jane Harrington-Price
Lowryland
WE SEPARATED AS SOON as we were on Park property, Fern heading for the dressing room to join the rest of the face characters in preening, primping, and getting ready to face their public. Not a job I envy, or one I would aspire to, even if I fit the requirements for any of the Park’s many featured characters—I’m too broad-shouldered and chesty to be a princess, too bitter and sarcastic to be a Fairy, and too tall in general to be shoved into a complicated costume that looks like something out of a child’s nightmare. My Price genes may have gotten me into this mess in the first place, but at least those same genes are keeping me from being crammed into a cloth-and-plastic Goblin suit. There are small mercies everywhere.
I took the underground route into the heart of Lowryland. Most guests never realize that everywhere they walk, they’re walking over more Lowryland. A complicated maze of tunnels and corridors runs from a point fifty yards outside the visible Park boundary, all the way under the Park itself, sometimes stacked two and three deep, so that it’s possible to just keep going down, into an endless warren of laundry rooms, storage, and intra-Park transit tunnels.
(Do I know for sure that there’s a colony of hidebehinds living under Lowryland? No. I do not. Am I pretty damn convinced that it has to be down there somewhere? Yes. Yes, I am. Because hidebehinds are smart, and they like it when other people do their work for them.)
The sound of laughter, conversation, and the occasional groan drifted out to meet me as I approached my assigned dressing room. I stood up straighter, pulling the veil of Melody West, grateful ex-cheerleader fleeing from a dubious past, down over myself. Then I stepped inside.
There are people who say you never really escape from high school, you just keep finding it in different forms, over and over again, until it finally kills you. Those people are assholes, and should not be allowed in polite company. That doesn’t mean they’re wrong. Entering that locker room was like falling down a dark tunnel to the first time I’d been Melody, when she’d been a lie I told the world to keep them from figuring out that I was a lot more Wednesday Addams than Marilyn Munster—not that Marilyn was a good option either, since being Marilyn implied living in a world where monsters were real, and that wasn’t something I was allowed to share with my classmates.
They got to be ignorant. They got to walk in the world thinking humanity was in charge of everything, the peak of the evolutionary ladder and rulers of all we surveyed. Turns out, ignorance often comes with an exciting, unexpected side effect: cruelty. To people who think they’re the best the worl
d has to offer, kindness is an afterthought and an unnecessary one at that.
The women already in the locker room were no better or worse than me. We were all junior employees, all moving around the Park daily as management decided what our priorities were for the week. We did everything but serve food and sweep streets—and when there was a janitorial emergency, there was always a chance one of us would find ourselves holding a broom. I didn’t mind. At the carnival, anybody could be asked to do just about anything in a pinch. I’m not too much of a fainting flower to mop up outside the Scrambler.
Try telling them that. They had better haircuts, better shoes, more friends, and everything else from the mean girl starter kit. Three of them laughed behind their hands when I walked into the room. The others continued getting ready. That didn’t mean I could shake the feeling that they were watching me, waiting for the moment when I’d try to strike up a conversation and I could be slapped down hard.
Humans are monkeys, and monkeys like to have a pecking order. I’d sealed my place in ours when, during training, I responded to someone asking “where did you move here from?” with “Route 4.” That was all it took. I was formerly homeless, a pity hire, and there was no possible way I could ever be as deserving of comfort or compassion as they were, because poverty is always a personal failing, no matter how it came about.
There are days when I want to punch absolutely everyone around me, and keep punching until they’re no longer capable of fighting back. I’m told those desires are antisocial. Sometimes, I really don’t care.
I crossed to my locker, opened it, and began to strip. I was going to spend my day in the Fairyland section of the Park, where Princesses Lizzie and Laura would be greeting their adoring public in between rides on the Midsummer Night’s Scream (a roller coaster that seemed to have been designed by someone who really hated the kind of people who like to ride roller coasters) and trips around the artificial river in Lizzie’s Goblin Voyage. I’d be swiping credit cards and making change at the Fine and Fair Gift Shop. Pretty standard, pretty boring, and pretty much a job I could do in my sleep.
I caught a flicker of motion out of the corner of my eye as I yanked on my uniform top. My fingertips warmed in anticipation of the coming fight. I tried to will the heat away. It had been more than a week since I’d set fire to anything I’d need to pay for, and almost three months since the last time I’d started a fire in the Park, period. That was a good thing. If I lost my job because I’d been caught burning company property, I was going to have a hell of a time getting hired anywhere else.
(The traditional destination for Lowryland Cast Members who lose their jobs due to minor rules infractions is Disney World, and vice-versa. Half the ride jockeys in Florida get passed back and forth between theme parks like trading cards on a playground. But there are things that render a person unemployable, and destruction of corporate assets is on the list. Also on the list, bizarrely enough, is chewing tobacco. I guess everyone has standards.)
“Hey, Mel,” said a sweet voice.
“Melody,” I replied, and finished adjusting my top. Fairyland has six separate themes, depending on which part of it you’re working. The Goblin Market area is styled in a vague parody of the pre-Raphaelite aesthetic, all deep jewel tones layered over pale pastels. It’s one of my favorite parts of the Park to work in, mostly because the costumes don’t show blood as well as, say, the ones in Candyland.
“Sorry, hon?”
I turned, pasting on an artificial smile. The woman next to me was dressed for a day in Metropolis, all shiny silver chrome and breathable purple mesh fabric. She looked like she was getting ready to skate backup in a production of Starlight Express, even down to the spray glitter in her hair.
“My name is Melody, not Mel,” I said. “That’s all I said.”
She frowned, nose wrinkling. “That’s not friendly of you.”
“Really? Because I thought I’d said I didn’t like being called ‘Mel’ every day for the last eight months.” The heat in my fingertips died back to comfortable embers. The magic was willing. The magic was ready and eager to go. That was soothing, even if I had no intention of using it. “Hello, Robin. What can I do for you today?”
My tormenter straightened, back on comfortable ground. Her cronies giggled behind their hands. I wanted to tell them they were acting like children, but that would have been an insult to children everywhere. Bullying isn’t tied to age. It’s tied to who a person is, and sadly, these people were more interested in being ugly assholes than they were in being decent human beings.
“Did you hear that raccoons got into the dumpsters out back again?” she asked, all wide-eyed and innocent.
A place as big as Lowryland makes a lot of trash, and it can’t all be burned on-property. There’s recycling, and sorting, and disposal to be dealt with. When a guest throws something away, it’s carted off by custodial and added to the mountain of debris we dispose of daily, bussing it—literally—to the dumpsters. They’re concealed from all public view by a concrete corral nearly half a mile from even the employee parking, where the garbage trucks can come and go without being seen.
It was no surprise when raccoons got into the damn things. If anything, it was a surprise when the raccoons didn’t. “No, I hadn’t. Thanks for the update. Does custodial know?”
“Oh, yeah,” she said, and thrust a brown paper bag at me. “Here.”
I didn’t take the bag. I’m not that stupid. “What’s this?”
“We just thought that if you had someone to bring you a lunch, you wouldn’t need to go diving in the garbage anymore,” she said, eyes wide. She dropped the bag onto the bench. The rest of the girls burst into triumphant laughter as she turned and sashayed away.
I watched her go, clenching my hands to keep myself from burning the whole damn place down. It’s not that I hate my job. It’s that I hate the people I have to do it with.
* * *
Fortunately for my sanity, none of the mean girls were assigned to my part of the Goblin Market, at least not this morning, and it wasn’t like they’d risk their usual shenanigans in front of the guests anyway. Fighting amongst ourselves is fine, as long as we do it where no one could see. Upsetting a paying customer, now, that’s grounds for immediate termination, no take-backs, there’s the door. So I stood in Fine and Fair, helping guests find genuine Lizzie and Laura dolls, assisting lost children, and generally doing whatever needed to be done at any given moment.
“Excuse me,” said a familiar voice. “Do you have this in a medium?”
I turned, already smiling, to face my Aunt Mary. “I’ll check the back,” I said.
She returned my smile. As was usually the case when she appeared at my work, she was dressed to blend in: jeans, sneakers, and a dark purple shirt she’d probably copied from a Hot Topic store window, with an art nouveau Lizzie surrounded by a border of pomegranate flowers stenciled down the side. Her long white hair was pulled into a braid. There was nothing she could do about her eyes, which looked like a hundred miles of empty highway, exit markers marching off toward the horizon, but most people either wouldn’t notice them or wouldn’t allow themselves to think too hard about what they’d seen. The dead walk among us. Denial keeps that from becoming too big of a problem. Usually.
Mary Dunlavy isn’t a blood relative, but she’s absolutely a member of the family, because family is more than blood. My Uncle Ted isn’t a blood relative—not of me—but he’s married to my Aunt Jane, and he’s the father of two of my cousins. Mary didn’t live long enough to marry in. She just babysat for my grandmother and my father and my aunt and my siblings . . . and me. She only crossed the country, traveling miles from her own grave, to stay with us and make sure we were safe. She’s always a crossroads and a call away, and while there are rules that govern what she can and can’t do, being a ghost who chooses to exist primarily among the living, she does as much as those rules allow.
She was also the only member of my family who knew where I was hiding. Because she wasn’t a blood relative when she was alive, her presence wouldn’t tip the balance toward the Covenant being able to find me, and because ghosts go wherever the hell they want, her showing up wasn’t going to trigger any alarms.
“Thank you,” she said, and leaned closer. “How you doing, kiddo?”
Being called “kiddo” by someone who looked like she hadn’t even finished high school—mostly because she hadn’t; she’d been dead before graduation—would have been amusing, if it hadn’t been Mary. As it was, being called anything else would have seemed strange. Normal is what you make it.
“Getting by.” I started walking through the store. She trailed behind me, still projecting the overall impression of a girl who wanted to know whether we had her size. As long as I kept smiling and kept my voice low, no one would notice anything out of the ordinary. That’s what I was aiming for. “How’s everybody else?”
Mary frowned. She didn’t like it when I refused to give her the details on my life, saying that as my only aunt with access, it was her duty to keep an eye on me. She wasn’t wrong about that. If she hadn’t been able to check in, I would probably have been even twitchier than I already was. Mary was my last connection to home. I was holding on with both hands.
“Worried about you,” she said. “Your mother wants you to call.”
“My mother always wants me to call.”
“Yes, and she’s got the right idea. There are ways—”
“We don’t know what resources they have. I wasn’t there long enough, and I was only in one facility. They could have a whole division of Arties all tapping away, looking for ways in.”