Page 52 of Tricks for Free

“It’s a fruit,” I said. Mary handed me a plate. I began piling pancakes and bacon onto it. “They’re from Colombia, I think. Incredibly tasty, unless you eat the seeds, which will kill the crap out of you. Really interesting neurotoxins. Megan puts her cherimoya into the juicer whole.”

Sam frowned. “Meaning . . . ?”

“Meaning the juice is full of crushed neurotoxic seeds, and if you drank it, you’d probably be dead before you hit the floor, so don’t drink it.” I walked back to the table. The seat next to him was open. I hesitated like a kid in a high school cafeteria before sinking into it, and was rewarded for my bravery with a quick, shy grin.

Fern rolled her eyes. “Get a room.”

“I have a room,” I said. “I just came out of my room.”

“I spent the night in her room,” said Sam with the faintest hint of smugness. He took a sip of his coffee—first one mug, and then the other. “No work today. That’s good, right?”

“Good and bad.” I leaned across the table to snag the milk. When you have hobbies like mine, healthy bones aren’t just a good idea, they’re a necessary investment in not becoming a smear on the track. “Good, I didn’t oversleep and get myself in trouble. Bad, I don’t know what I’m going to do with myself.”

“Says the girl with her boyfriend, who she hasn’t seen in six months, sitting next to her,” said Mary.

I shot her a glare that would probably have been a lot more effective if it had contained any actual heat. “I told you not to bring him here.”

“I didn’t,” said Mary. “I just told him where to find you, and that you needed him if you wanted to stay alive.”

“It’s not like I was doing anything,” said Sam.

Fern fixed him with a stern look. In that moment, she seemed to be channeling my mother. I choked on my milk, barely managing to keep it from coming out of my nose.

“What do you do?” she asked.

“Well, ma’am,” he said, with sudden politeness, “I’m normally a trapeze artist with my family’s carnival, and I do a lot of administrative tasks for my grandmother, who owns the show. Unfortunately, we had a little issue with fire damage—”

“Meaning Annie burned the whole damn place to the ground to keep the Covenant from tracking them all down and killing them deader than I am,” said Mary blithely.

Sam continued, unruffled, “—and had to shut down for the rest of the season. The insurance money is coming through, and we’ve rented a training facility in Indiana, so everybody’s staying in shape. This will probably be good for the show in the long run. New rides, new equipment, time to work on our routines without needing to worry about keeping our bellies full—honestly, it’s a blessing.”

“I hear a ‘but’ coming on,” said Mary.

“But it’s boring,” said Sam. “But there are humans around like, all the time, talking to my grandmother, or running more tests on the residue from the fire, or doing one more interview before they sign off on the latest report. And we’re sharing space with another carnival, and they’re all nice people, but they have their own way of doing things, and some of them are sort of naïve when it comes to remembering that humans don’t own the whole world, just most of it. So I have to stay human unless I’m in my room or in a closed rehearsal.”

Fern frowned. “So?”

“Imagine trying to hold in a sneeze when you really need to pee,” said Sam. “Now imagine doing that forever.”

Fern’s frown melted into a look of horror. She looked to me for confirmation.

“He means it,” I said, nodding. “Fūri aren’t like chupacabra. They actually have a default form, and it’s not the one that looks like me.”

One of the other jammers with the league back in Portland, Princess Leya-you-out, is a chupacabra. For her, standing on two legs is exactly as natural and comfortable as wandering around on four. She doesn’t change forms when she sleeps, because whichever form she’s in is her “real” one. Sam, like all fūri, works slightly differently. For him, humanity is an effort, a disguise he puts on, rather than a shape he shifts out of.

“Wow,” said Fern. Then, almost shyly, she said, “When we’re kids, sylphs don’t have a stable density. That’s why we don’t really live in big family groups anymore. Sometimes children float away, and that’s not safe, so we all have to take precautions.”

“What kind?” asked Sam.

“Um. Well, usually, people have babies and then give them to crèche workers to raise. We have, you know, a few of them left. Around the country. Big houses in the middle of nowhere, where kids can grow up until they’re old enough to know what density their body ought to be. Then you practice every day, until you can stay the same always.”

I frowned. “When do your parents come back for you?”

“Oh. They don’t. We’re all adopted.” Fern was suddenly very interested in her bacon. “Once you settle, a family that has a space for a kid will come and get you, and then you’re theirs. My family was really nice. They had dropped off a daughter about my age, so maybe I was even related to them.”

Sam’s frown joined mine. “How do you, you know,” he asked. “Not wind up sleeping with your brother by mistake?”

“People who aren’t good to sleep with smell wrong when you’re in estrus,” said Fern blithely. “Like you wouldn’t smell right, so I wouldn’t sleep with you, because you’re not the same species as me.”