Tricks for Free

Official cover

**Tricks for Free** is the seventh novel in the InCryptid series by Seanan McGuire. It features Antimony Price.

## Synopsis

**Penance, noun:**

1. Punishment for past actions.

2. An attempt to pay for what can't be bought.

3. See also "exile."

Antimony Price is on the run. With the Covenant on her tail and her family still in danger, she needs to get far, far away from anyone who might recognize her--including her own mice. For the first time in a long time, a Price is flying without a safety net. Where do you go when you need to disappear into a crowd without worrying about attracting attention? An amusement park, of course.

Some people would call Lowryland the amusement park. It's one of the largest in Florida, the keystone of the Lowry entertainment empire...but for Annie, it's a place to hide. She's just trying to keep her head down long enough to come up with a plan that will get her home without getting anyone killed. No small order when she's rooming with gorgons and sylphs, trying to placate frustrated ghosts, and rushing to get to work on time.

Then the accidents begin. The discovery of a dead man brings Annie to the attention of the secret cabal of magic users running Lowryland from behind the scenes. They want the fire that sleeps in her fingers. They want her on their side. They want to help her--although their help, like everything else, comes with a price.

No plan. Minimal backup. No way out. Annie's about to get a crash course in the reality behind the pretty façade. If she's lucky, she'll survive the experience.

## Plot

**Prologue:** Six years ago, Annie arrives late, battered, and bleeding to cheer at a football game. Her teammates believe she has an abusive boyfriend and rally around her, not knowing that she was dealing with dangerous cryptids.

**Chapter 1:** Eight months ago, Annie interviews for a job at Lowryland. The hiring manger is prepared to write her off as a homeless nobody, but her former cheerleading captain Sophie appears as head of HR and offers her a chance.

**Chapter 2:** Annie struggles to wake up for a morning shift at Lowryland, and rides into work with roommates Megan and Fern.

**Chapter 3:** Mary checks in during Annie’s shift.

**Chapter 4:** Annie’s roommates gather after work to roller skate in the closed park, but Annie and Fern find a dead body.

**Chapter 5:** Sophie intercepts Annie on the way to work the next morning and takes her to PR, who interrogate her about her role in finding the body.

**Chapter 6:** One of the PR people recognizes the stink of ghost on Annie and pulls her aside for a different sort of questioning. She introduces Annie to the Lowryland cabal.

**Chapter 7:** The cabal offers to train her in sorcery. Separately, Sophie warns her to stay away from Emily.

**Chapter 8:** Annie recieves a booklet of time-off passes to encourage the goodwill of her coworker after her absence. A bullying coworker tries to weasel some of them, but Mary interrupts and gets Annie alone, where she says that Annie was completely off her radar while in the cabal’s offices.

The hiring manager sends Annie on break early, and she is present when a fryer explodes and sets another employee on fire. Annie, soon joined by Emily, put the fire out. Emily sends Annie home for the day.

**Chapter 9:** Mary appears in the apartment looking for answers, and Annie reluctantly brings Fern in on the sorcery secret.

**Chapter 10:** The next day, she is taken to the cabal and begins instruction on sorcery. This includes meditations and rituals that cause the heat to leave her fingers: for the time being, she cannot summon fire accidentally or intentionally.

**Chapter 11:** A float explodes during the Lowryland daily parade. Annie leaps into action, pulling the fallen Princess Laura and unaccompanied children away from the wreckage, then makes herself scarce when Mary warns photographers will be coming soon. Emily finds Annie alone and muses about Annie’s tendencies toward unsung heroics.

**Chapter 12:** Thrown by all the bad luck that seems to be following Annie around, Fern comes clean: she is in Florida because Elsie had told her Annie was in trouble, and Fern recruited Cylia to bend their luck to be in the same area as Annie.

**Chapter 13:** Sam arrives under Mary’s directions, and tensions rise between him and Annie’s roommates before she diffuses the situation.

**Chapter 14:** After a night of physical reconnection, Sam and Annie catch up with Fern, Megan, and Mary.

**Chapter 15:** Annie uses her employee comp tickets to show Sam around Lowryland for the day. Sam is a Lowry superfan and acts like a kid in a candy store, at least until a tree nearly falls on a child. Sam saves the kid and spirits himself and Annie away to the closed-off Fairyland.

**Chapter 16:** Sam panicks: he cannot revert back to human form. Annie sneaks him through the underground employee tunnels and calls Cylia for a ride away from the park.

**Chapter 17:** Cylia announces that Sam’s luck is gone. Not turned bad, but a blank slate, and explains all the implications. Seemingly, for unknown reasons, Annie is source of the problem.

**Chapter 18:** Annie summons Mary and, though her, Rose, who figures out that the Lowry cabal has been stealing power and luck from the park’s guests, Sam included. Annie, too, is being siphoned as part of her “training.” Sam refuses to get the hell out of dodge, committing to staying with Annie while she solves the problem.

**Chapter 19:** Annie, Sam, Fern, Cylia, and Megan plan to infiltrate Lowryland and dismantle the cabal’s power-siphon. They test Megan’s stunning abilities on the various cryptids on their team.

**Chapter 20:** During their infiltration, they run into Emily and Sophie. Sophie who assumes Sam is Annie’s old asshole boyfriend and slaps him. Annie assures her that Sam is a recent and good development in her life, and then Megan stuns Sophie to get her out of the line of fire. They take Emily prisoner with little resistance and go to find the rest of the cabal. While they are in the elevator, Emily gets away and sends them plummeting down the shaft.

**Chapter 21:** The elevator falls far longer than physics should allow, giving them time to escape through the roof and force their way onto the nearest floor. Fern breaks her leg in the jostling, but Sam manages to get them all to safety.

**Chapter 22:** They take the stairs. Annie reflects and sees all the signs that the cabal was using her all along. They reach the training room, which Annie enters and is reunited with her fire. Then they all storm the cabal meeting room, where they fight the magic-users. Annie’s team gets the upperhand and she snaps Colin’s wand then struck by backlash and is thrown through a window into open air.

**Chapter 23:** Sam follows her through the window and crashes them relatively safety through another on a lower floor. The villains pound on the interior door, and Annie has Sam launch her, trapeze-style, out the window into the Florida swamp. Sam leaps after her.

Mary appears to yell at her and warn that the cabal took Fern, Megan, and Cylia. Annie hotwires Cylia’s car and drives herself and Sam to Lowryland, where she’s sure her friends are being held. On their way through Deep-Down, a train off its tracks breaks the glass-in tunnel they’re traveling in and floods them with a small lake.

**Chapter 24:** Annie and Sam are thrown into the surrounding water. Annie knows they are drowning and calls on Mary to make a deal with the crossroads. Annie exchanges her magic for getting herself and Sam out of the water alive.

**Chapter 25:** Annie wakes up to find herself and Sam safe if waterlogged. They continue on to the Midnight Scream roller-coaster and confront the gathered cabal members, Annie having changed into her roller blades. Colin stops her by revealing her friends’ lives are in danger, and Annie must ditch him to rescue them.

**Chapter 26:** Annie locates Fern, Cylia, and Megan spaced out and tied up along the roller coaster track. She rescues them in the nick of time. They return to cabal members being held captive by Sam, and Megan petrifies Colin and Joshua. They hand Emily over to Mary and Rose’s ghost justice.

**Chapter 27:** Annie bids farewell to Sophie: she, Sam, Fern, and Cylia are fleeing the remaining Lowry cabal members via epic roadtrip. Megan plans to stay and finish her residency. Directed by Cylia’s jink instinct, they are heading to Maine.

## Characters

### Major

* Antimony Price: The youngest Price sibling of her generation, Annie is in hiding from her family to protect them from the Covenant of St. George's wrath. She is still trying to learn how to control her sorcerer abilities, and refuses Mary's requests to send her reinforcements.
* Mary Dunlavy: Crossroads ghost and family babysitter tied to Annie. Mary worries about Annie's safety and peace of mind, but respects Annie's wishes to fly under the radar for - at least until the danger grows so much that she feels she can overrule Annie's wishes and send for help.
* Fern Conway: Annie's former roller derby teammate, current roommate, and a sylph. Fern plays a "face character" at Lowryland and loves skating in the park after hours.
* Megan Rodriguez: A Pliny's gorgon Annie meets and rooms with in Lowryland. Megan is a medical resident at the Lowryland hospital. Megan does not know Annie is a Price; Annie does not know that Megan's mother is Alex Price's coworker.
* Cylia Mackie: A former captain in Annie's roller derby league. Cylia's jink luck led her and Fern to Lowryland at Elsie Harrington's request, and Cylia has been secretly looking out for Annie ever since.
* Sam Taylor: Annie's kind-of boyfriend from the Campbell Family Carnival. Sam is anguished when Annie disappears after the Covenant attack on the carnival, and was in regular communication with Mary to make sure Annie was okay. Mary finally bypasses Annie's wishes to let Sam know where to find her.

### Minor

* Sophie Vargas-Jackson
* Emily Doyle
* Colin Brighton
* Joshua
* Clarice: Recruiter
* Mr. Knighton: Public Relations
* David Wilson: General employee, deceased
* Cathy: General employee, burn victim
* Ginger: Guest, likely orphaned
* Andrea: Face character, deceased
* Marissa: Face character

### Mentioned

* Elsie Harrington
* Ted Harrington
* Jane Harrington-Price
* Verity Price
* Alex Price
* Thomas Price
* Sarah Zellaby
* Angela Baker
* Evelyn Price
* Alice Price
* Juniper Campbell -unnamed; Alice’s ambulomancer godmother
* Big Al
* Mindy and Mork
* Eddie in Security
* Tav Mackie
* Leonard Cunningham
* Emery Spenser
* Michael Lowry
* Elmira Street
* Queen of the Routewitches

## Field Guide

* Crossroads Ghost
* Fūri
* Hitchiking Ghost
* Jink
* Routewitch
* Sylph
* Trainspotter
* Witch

**Mentioned**

* Bigfoot
* Changeling
* Chupacabra
* Djinn
* Dragon
* Hidebehind
* Incubus
* Succubus
* Umbramancer
* Wadjet

## Locations

* Portland, Oregon
	+ Lewis and Clark High School
* Lowryland, Florida
	+ Park
	+ Staff Housing
	+ Nearby Roller Derby Warehouse

**Mentioned**

* Indiana - carnival training grounds

## Organizations

* Lewis and Clark Trailblazers Cheerleaders
* Lowryland Cabal
* Lowryland Security
* Lakeland Ladies derby team

**Mentioned**

* Covenant of St. George
* Spenser and Smith Family Carnival
* Campbell Family Carnival
* Slasher Chicks
* Wilsonville Rose Petals

## Continuity

* References to Verity revealing the Price's existence on national television and Annie subsequently going undercover with the Covenant.
* Rose says stealing distance traveled is one of the main aims of snake cults.
* Antimony says that for a while Alice thought that Thomas and Mary were romantically involved, and it caused a lot of tension.
* Thomas bargained with the crossroads for Alice Healy’s life

## Trivia

* Artist Aly Fell was unavailable for this book, so Lee Moyer designed the cover.

## Quotes

* **Emily:** “Someone tell the EMTs where to go! And for the love of God, someone get a flashmob going!” (Ch 8)

* **Mary:** “Okay, what the hell is going on?”
**Antimony:**“That’s a really long story and I promise you’ll get the whole thing, probably with footnotes and I might need to draw some flowcharts to make sense to make sure *I* understand it.” (Ch. 14)

### Epigraphs

**Main Article: Epigraphs**

Includes quotes from Evelyn Baker, Frances Brown, Enid Healy, Jane Harrington-Price, Alice Healy, and Mary Dunlavy.

### Pop Culture

* Obligatory Disney reference
* Annie makes tons of pop culture references: Bruce Banner, Little Bo Peep, Wednesday Addams, Marilyn Munster, The Starlight Express, Hot Topic, Firestarter/Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, Lake Wobegon, Mean Girls, Frozen/Elsa, Emma Frost, Cinderella, X-Men, Harry Potter, Law and Order, Nancy Drew, Veronica Mars, Barbie, Carrie, Romeo and Juliet / Montagues and Capulets, American Ninja Gladiator, Merlin, DnD GMs, Godzilla, Cthulu, Harry Potter, Stan Lee, Sailor Moon

## Playlist

Spotify ("Jump Up" by Da Beat Bros unavailable; also missing the same songs as the YouTube playlist)

YouTube (missing "The Secret Lives of the Dead" by Tettix and "Hold Me Up" By We're About 9)

## References

1. ↑ Seanan on Twitter