Page 92 of Tricks for Free

Stopping to put my skates on might have felt like a waste of time, but it was actually anything but. Skating bruised and battered is what derby girls do. I might not be able to walk faster than a hobble for the next few days, and that was fine, because I could still skate like the top jammer of the Slasher Chicks.

“I’m the Final Girl, you fuckers,” I muttered, and pushed off, steadily gathering speed as I began to skate through the area, looking for my boyfriend.

Sam was a big guy; he wouldn’t have been thrown into any trees, or at least he wouldn’t have stayed there once the water rolled back. If he’d been knocked out—which wasn’t a bad assumption—he would also be in his heavier fūri form. That was what really worried me. Monkeys have denser bones than humans do, and as a yōkai, Sam had more in common, physically, with the simian side of his heritage. The water had pinned me to the tunnel roof, but Sam? He would have sunk like a stone. There was no telling how much water he’d inhaled while I was bargaining with the crossroads for our lives.

They’d promised me he would live. They hadn’t promised immortality, or indestructability, or even that he’d still be in one piece when I found him. Even with Mary there to keep me from screwing up completely, the situation had been too dire to allow for the sort of careful negotiation that had really needed to happen. I skated faster, my heart hammering in my chest, my mind spinning out every dire scenario it could come up with—and there were quite a few of those. The curse of an active imagination.

The most active imagination in the world couldn’t prepare me for coming around a bend in the path and finding Sam sprawled, motionless, in the middle of a flowerbed.

“Sam!” I skated to his side as fast as I could, dropping to my knees before I’d come to a complete stop. I immediately regretted my lack of kneepads as the pavement stripped away several layers of skin. That was going to sting. And it didn’t matter, because he still wasn’t moving.

Fighting to keep it together, I pressed my ear against his chest, relaxing only when I heard the distant, steady beat of his heart. He was unconscious. He wasn’t dead.

“Hey.” I sat up, gripping his shoulders and giving him a shake. His head lolled, but he didn’t respond. I shook harder. “Hey. Wake up. We need to go fight a bunch of asshole Harry Potter wannabes to get our friends back.”

Still he didn’t respond. I sighed.

“I didn’t want to do this,” I said, and slapped him.

Hitting your friends without their consent is generally not a good idea, and is a good way to end a friendship. Hitting your significant others without their consent is the sort of thing that leads to breakups and restraining orders. Under the circumstances, and in the absence of smelling salts, I figured he’d forgive me.

Sam groaned. I slapped him again. He groaned louder. I pulled back my hand for one more hit, and stopped as something grabbed my wrist—something wet and hairy and flexible. A glance confirmed that it was Sam’s tail, and I felt something in my chest unsnarl, even before I turned to look at him. His eyes were open. He looked confused, but his eyes were open, and he was looking at me, and he was alive. The crossroads might have tried to cheat. They hadn’t quite succeeded.

“Annie?” he said, bewildered. “What the fuck . . . ?”

“Their trainspotter threw a roller coaster at us.”

He blinked. “I hate that those words made sense in that order. But it does explain why I feel like I’ve been hit by a train.”

“Because you were.” I stood, bracing myself to keep from rolling away before I offered him my hands. “Up. We have to move. They probably think we’re both dead, but that’s only going to last until their routewitch talks to the paths, or someone thinks to come out and look for a body.”

“More hate,” said Sam. He took my hand, wobbling as he got his feet under himself and slowly, awkwardly stood. Then he shook himself, sending drops of water scattering in all directions. When he was done, he was dryer, and fluffier than I had ever seen him.

It was enough to make me smile, if only for a moment. “Nice hair.”

“You’re one to talk.” He ran a hand over the top of his head as he looked around, tail curling and uncurling anxiously behind him. “You know this place better than I do. Where do we go?”

“This way,” I said, and pointed before I started to skate.

Neither of us was at our best, but I’m a good enough skater that I was able to build up a good head of steam, and when something went whipping by to my left, it was no surprise to see that it was Sam, using the lights and overhanging tree branches to travel through the Park at an impressive speed. He was holding back, circling me, allowing me to be the one who guided us to the goal. I flashed him a thumbs-up and turned, heading down a narrow side path toward the Midsummer Night’s Scream.

Their trainspotter had been strong enough to wrest the Sea Dragon off its tracks, but that would have taken a lot out of him, and unless they were running a coaster somewhere else in the Park—which I was pretty sure I would have been able to hear—he was still going to be drained. That was good. He couldn’t hit us with another train. That didn’t mean Emily was at anything other than full strength, and while routewitches are more defensive than offensive, they’re still dangerous.

With the two witches dead, we were down to a routewitch, an ambulomancer, a trainspotter, and a sorcerer. Not the sort of spread that seemed like a good time, but at least none of them were particularly complementary. Their powers weren’t designed to work together. The witches had probably been able to bridge the gaps, making the cabal more cooperative, less competitive. Now they were gone, and we were racing toward a four-way boss fight.

“Sam!” He stopped swinging and waited for me to catch up, moving more slowly to keep pace as I said, “Joshua’s the trainspotter. Don’t get between him and anything with more than four wheels. Emily’s going to have trouble getting a fix on you if you stay off the ground.”

He looked concerned. “What about you? You’re on the ground.”

“I’m hoping the roller skates will confuse her.” It was a foolish hope. Wheels have never confused a routewitch before. I was more hoping I could deliver an elbow to her chin before she had a chance to do anything.

“Nope,” said Sam, and grabbed my shoulders with his feet, wrapping his tail around my waist for good measure before he resumed his forward momentum. “Not going to go on a hope. Going to go on a ‘definitely and also we’re going to survive.’ Now tell me where to turn.”

I thought about arguing, and decided against it just as quickly, gripping his ankles to stabilize myself as I said, “Head left. The coaster will be right ahead of us.”

“Got it.” He didn’t seem to be weighed down by my extra mass at all, and kept swinging smoothly onward, expression grim. “What else do I need to know?”

“Without his wand, Colin has a lot of technique, but not that much raw power. I think that’s why he was siphoning mine.” A sorcerer who didn’t have the strength to back up his threats would be easy pickings in the wider world—unless he surrounded himself with allies and occasionally tricked a younger, stupider magic-user into doing something that they shouldn’t. I had made him stronger. I had made him legitimate.